Two case studies on NARCCAP precipitation extremes

Our primary objective is to examine the strength of daily correspondence of extreme precipitation events between observations and the output of both the RCMs and the driving reanalysis product.

To explore this correspondence, we employ methods from multivariate extreme value theory. These methods require that we account for marginal behavior, and we first model and compare climatological quantities which describe tail behavior of daily precipitation for both the observations and model output before turning attention to quantifying the correspondence of the extreme events. Daily precipitation in a West Coast region of North America is analyzed in two seasons, and it is found that the simulated extreme events from the reanalysis-driven NARCCAP models exhibit strong daily correspondence to extreme events in the observational record.