Downscaling precipitation across the southeast United States

The management of water resources and irrigation are some of the areas affected by the forecasts of seasonal precipitation from global climate models (GCMs). However, most water resource applications require forecasts at a finer resolution than provided by the GCMs. In order to provide local forecasts of precipitation, GCM results can be downscaled to local scale through a variety of techniques. This study explores the results of downscaling using a geo-spatial temporal weather generator and the Climate Forecast System (CFS) model for stations across the southeast United States. Results from the downscaling suggest that this technique is capable of generating precipitation estimates close to the observed values, as well as capturing the spatial structure of precipitation events across the region.