Evaluating precipitation distributions at regional scales: A benchmarking framework and application to CMIP5 and 6 models

The collection includes metrics focused on the maximum peak, lower 10th percentile, and upper 90th percentile in precipitation amount and frequency distributions; the similarity between observed and modeled frequency distributions; an unevenness measure based on cumulative amount; average total intensity on all days with precipitation; and number of precipitating days each year. We apply our framework to 25 CMIP5 and 41 CMIP6 models, as well as six observation-based products of daily precipitation.

Our results indicate that many CMIP5 and 6 models substantially overestimate the observed light-precipitation amount and frequency, as well as the number of precipitating days, especially over midlatitude regions outside of some land regions in the Americas and Eurasia. Improvement from CMIP5 to 6 is shown in some regions, especially in midlatitude regions, but it is not evident globally, and over the tropics most metrics point toward degradation.