Evaluating the necessity of post-processing techniques on d4PDF data for extreme climate assessment

The occurrence and severity of extreme precipitation events have been increasing globally. Although numerous projections have been proposed and developed for evaluating the climate change impacts, most models suffer from significant bias error due to the coarse resolution of the climate datasets, which affects the accuracy of the climate change assessment. Therefore, in this study, post-processing techniques (interpolation and bias correction methods) were adopted on the database for Policy Decision Making for Future Climate Change (d4PDF) model for extreme climatic flood events simulation in the Chao Phraya River Basin, Thailand, under + 4-K future climate simulation. Due to the limited number of the rain gages, the gradient plus inverse distance squared interpolation method (combination of multiple linear regression and distance weighting methods) was applied in this study. In the bias correction methods, the additional setting of monthly and seasonal periods was adjusted. The proposed bias correction approach deployed gamma distribution combined with generalized Pareto distribution setting with the seasonal period for the rainy season datasets, whereas only the gamma setting was applied with the monthly period during the dry season. The outcomes revealed that the proposed method could react to extreme rainfall events, expand dry days during dry season, and intensify rainfall amount during rainy season. The post-processing d4PDF trends of six sea surface temperature (SST) patterns (consists of 90 ensemble members) of two periods (near future: 2051–2070 and far future: 2091–2110) recorded the highest and lowest amounts of annual rainfalls of 4,450 mm/year in mid-stream of Nan River and 710 mm/year in the lower CPRB, respectively. Notably, the significant variances noted in the rainfall patterns among ensembles, demanding further investigation in future climate change, impact studies. The findings of the study provided novel insights on the importance of proper post-processing techniques for improving the robustness of d4PDF in climate change impacts assessment.