Better representation of sea surface temperatures provides more realistic regional climate simulations for southern Africa

Mean sea surface temperature (SST) distribution in (°C) with the Benguela and Agulhas current for southern Africa calculated from ERA-Interim from 1993 to 1997 © Torsten Weber

Scientists at GERCIS published an analysis on the sensitivity of the atmospheric water cycle to corrections of the sea surface temperature (SST) bias in regional climate simulations over southern Africa.

Several high-resolution sensitivity experiments were performed with the regional climate model REMO forced with data from the global circulation model MPI-ESM-LR using corrected and uncorrected SSTs.

The experiments showed a distinct impact of the corrected SST on the moisture transport, the meridional vertical circulation and on the precipitation pattern in southern Africa. Furthermore, the authors found that the experiment with the corrected SST led to a reduction of the wet bias over southern Africa and to a better agreement with observations as without SST bias corrections. More detailed information can be found in the open access article published in "Climate Dynamics".

Article in Climate Dynamics