WRF GCM and Reanalysis-driven Dynamical Downscaling Evaluation of Present Day Climate Simulations over Bolivia

This paper presents an evaluation of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model performance in an orographically complex region, Bolivia. This study is part of a comprehensive study of projected climate change in that country. The key goal for this study is to evaluate the WRF performance for the present day climate and evaluate the internal bias of the model so it can be used for assessing the uncertainties in the future climate change projections in the upcoming studies. Bolivia is a developing country, which according to the 5^th IPCC Assessment Report is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. To capture the magnitude of projected climate change at an appropriate spatial resolution for decision-making purposes, three different GCM-driven WRF simulations with three different RCP Scenarios have been carried out along with a 33-year historical run driven by NCEP to serve as a proxy for observation at the same spatial resolution. The evaluation has been done in terms of spatial pattern of seasonal climatologies for the whole country and various regions following topography, annual cycle and point-to-point statistical comparisons for precipitation, 2-meter air temperature and 10-meter wind. The WRF simulations also have been evaluated against the highest resolution gridded dataset (25 km) available for the country.