High-Resolution Climate Models and Mountain Meteorology

In the past, most global and regional climate models were operating at horizontal resolutions of 10-100 km. While mountains always played an important role in these models, for instance regarding the role of gravity-wave drag, the resolution did not allow to adequately relating to the recent progress in meso-scale mountain meteorology. It is argued that with the advent of km-scale regional climate models, climate models become attractive tools in mountain meteorology. In addition, as mountains are considered hot spots of climate change, for instance due to the role of seasonal snow cover, linking process understanding from mountain meteorology to climate change research becomes increasingly important.

In this presentation an overview will be presented on the emerging use of km-resolution regional climate models in regions of complex topography. Examples will address the use of such models in the following areas: (i) assessment of model biases in mountain regions, (ii) investigation of climate impacts of mountains, (iii) generation of mountain climatologies, and (iv) construction of climate change scenarios. Particular consideration will be given to aspects related to snow cover, heavy precipitation events, and mountain hydrology. Examples will benefit from a recently developed modeling strategy using a GPU-based version of the COSMO model over the European and Alpine regions. It is argued that the advent of high-resolution climate models opens exciting prospects in mountain meteorology.