Toward a climate downscaling for the Eastern mediterranean at high-resolution

As a first step toward downscaling global model simulations of future climates for the eastern Mediterranean Sea and surrounding land area, mesoscale-model simulations with the Pennsylvania State University – National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) mesoscale model, version 5 (MM5) are verified in the context of precipitation amount. The simulations are driven with January NCAR-NCEP reanalysis project (NNRP) lateral-boundary conditions and assimilate surface and upper air observations. The results of the simulations compare reasonably well with rain gauge and satellite estimates of monthly total precipitation, and the model reproduces the overall trends in inter-annual precipitation variability for one test region. Cyclones during the period were tracked, and their properties identified.