Articles | Volume 12, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-1427-2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-1427-2021
Research article
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06 Dec 2021
Research article | Highlight paper |  | 06 Dec 2021

Extreme metrics from large ensembles: investigating the effects of ensemble size on their estimates

Claudia Tebaldi, Kalyn Dorheim, Michael Wehner, and Ruby Leung

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Cited articles

Alexander, L. V.: Global Observed Long-term Changes in Temperature and Precipitation Extremes: a Review of Progress and Limitations in IPCC Assessments and Beyond, Weather and Climate Extremes, 11, 4–16, 2016. a
Arora, V. K., Scinocca, J. F., Boer, G. J., Christian, J. R., Denman, K. L., Flato, G. M., Kharin, V. V., Lee, W. G., and Merryfield, W. J.: Carbon emission limits required to satisfy future representative concentration pathways of greenhouse gases, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L05805, https://doi.org/10.1029/2010GL046270, 2011. a
Bittner, M., Schmidt, H., Timmreck, C., and Sienz, F.: Using a large ensemble of simulations to assess the Northern Hemisphere stratospheric dynamical response to tropical volcanic eruptions and its uncertainty, Geophys. Res. Lett., 43, 9324–9332, https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL070587, 2016. a
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We address the question of how large an initial condition ensemble of climate model simulations should be if we are concerned with accurately projecting future changes in temperature and precipitation extremes. We find that for most cases (and both models considered), an ensemble of 20–25 members is sufficient for many extreme metrics, spatial scales and time horizons. This may leave computational resources to tackle other uncertainties in climate model simulations with our ensembles.
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