Generation of Synthetic Daily Weather for Climate Change Scenarios and Extreme Storm Intensification

Abstract

Long-term simulations in watershed hydrology, soil and nutrient transport, and sustainability of agricultural production systems require long-term weather records that are often not available at the location of interest. Generation of synthetic daily weather data is a common approach to augment limited weather observations. Here a synthetic daily weather generation model (called SYNTOR) is described. SYNTOR fulfills the traditional role of generating alternative weather realizations that have statistical properties similar to those of the parent historical weather it is intended to simulate. In addition, it has the capability to simulate daily weather records for climate change scenarios and storm intensification due to climate change. The various model components are briefly summarized and an application is presented for semi-arid climate conditions in west-central Oklahoma. SYNTOR generated daily weather compared well with observed weather values. Climate change is simulated by adjusting weather generation parameters to reflect the changed mean monthly weather values of climate projections. Storm intensification is approximated by increasing the top 10 percentile of storm distribution by a predefined amount based on previous studies of trends in United States precipitation. Further evaluation of published storm intensification values and associated uncertainties and spatial variability is recommended.