High-resolution precipitation re-analysis system for climatological purposes

In this article, we describe the design and the validation of the Mescan precipitation analysis system developed for climatological purposes under the EURO4M project. The system is based on an optimal interpolation algorithm using the 24-h aggregated gauge measurements from the surface network. The background fields are the total accumulated precipitation forecasts at different resolutions from the ALADIN or HIRLAM mesoscale models, downscaled to 5.5 km grid spacing, chosen to match the time period of the climatological gauge reports. The validation of the Mescan system is carried out over the French territory employing various metrics and by providing forcing to a hydrological model to produce river discharges. The investigations have shown that the precipitation analyses have almost the same quality as the well-validated SAFRAN analysis system. In addition, the analysis of the precipitation variance spectra computed on the same horizontal domain has indicated that at short wavelengths the downscaled fields have significantly lower variability than a field produced by time integrating a forecast model. The Mescan precipitation analysis system has successfully been used to produce 24-h total accumulated precipitation re-analyses on a 5.5 km grid over Europe for the period 2007–2010.