The Bureau of Meteorology Statistical Downscaling Model Graphical User Interface: user manual and software documentation

......................................................................................................................1 Part A: Scientific background.....................................................................................3 1) Introduction........................................................................................................3 2) The Bureau of Meteorology Statistical Downscaling Model ............................4 3) The predictands obtained from the GUI ............................................................7 4) The development of the SDMs used in the GUI:.............................................11 a) General principles guiding the optimisation of the SDMs...........................11 b) Defining daily meteorological situations .....................................................13 c) Change-of-Date files ....................................................................................15 d) SDM optimisation versus application to climate model simulations...........15 e) Characteristics of the optimised SDMs: ......................................................17 5) Evaluation of the SDMs used in the GUI ........................................................20 6) The Global Climate Models used in the GUI ..................................................23 Part B: The Graphical User Interface........................................................................26 1) The software structure .........................................................................................26 f) Program flow chart ......................................................................................26 g) User management.........................................................................................27 h) Individual subroutines..................................................................................28 2) Using the GUI..................................................................................................29 a) Access URL .................................................................................................29 b) Front page layout .........................................................................................29 c) The interactive web interface.......................................................................30 BoM, SDM-GUI documentation Authors: B. Timbal et al. iv 3) Results provided by the GUI............................................................................34 a) Generating several outputs...........................................................................34 b) Graphics and Data Display and Download..................................................35 c) Termination and closing ..............................................................................37 4) Summary and additional information ...................................................................39 a) Summary on the existing tool ......................................................................39 b) Case studies performed with this tool..........................................................40 c) Future developments of the tool ..................................................................40 d) Other existing software complementary to this tool ....................................42 Acknowledgements...................................................................................................43 Bibliography .............................................................................................................44 Appendix A: Analysis of the SDM optimised parameters........................................49 Appendix B: Analysis of the SDM skill ...................................................................56 Appendix C: Perl scripts ...........................................................................................66 Appendix D: Directory structure ..............................................................................70 Appendix E: The Statistical Downscaling Model (SDM) ........................................73 Appendix F: The graphical outputs...........................................................................79 Appendix G: Case study 1: projected Tmax in Mildura ...........................................83 Appendix H: Case study 2: sub-grid heterogeneity ..................................................87 a) For temperature............................................................................................87 b) For rainfall ...................................................................................................89 BoM, SDM-GUI documentation Authors: B. Timbal et al.