Rare Event Simulation of Extreme European Winter Rainfall in an Intermediate Complexity Climate Model

Abstract

We test the application of a rare event simulation (RES) algorithm to accelerate the sampling of extreme winter rainfall over Europe in a climate model. The genealogical particle analysis algorithm, an ensemble method that interrupts the simulation at intermediate times to clone realizations in which an extreme event is developing, is applied to the intermediate complexity general circulation model PlaSim. We show that the algorithm strongly reduces the numerical effort required to estimate probabilities of extremes, demonstrating the potential of RES of seasonal precipitation extremes.