The diurnal precipitation cycle over Sweden - comparing observations with simulations from a high-resolution Regional Climate Model (RCA3)

It is known that climate models still have remarkable defficiencies in simulating precipitation characteristics observed on different temporal scales. This also applies for sub-daily scales, i.e. the diurnal precipitation cycle. Even if the large-scale circulation conditions are simluated fairly well and give the background conditions for regional rainfall characteristics, the mechanisms triggering timing and amount of rainfall are not understood completely. Precipitation characteristics show a relativey low spatial autocorrelation. Increasing the spatial resolution of climate models may be one way to improve the quality of climate simulations in terms of simulating local and regional precipitation climatology.