An improved statistical bias correction method that also corrects dry climate models

Abstract. Daily meteorological data from climate models is needed for many climate impact studies, e.g. in hydrology or agriculture but direct model output can contain large systematic errors. Thus, statistical bias correcting is applied to correct the raw model data. However, up to now no method has been introduced that fulfills the following demands simultaneously: (1) The long term climatological trends (climate change signal) should not be altered during bias correction, (2) the model data should match the observational data in the historical period as accurate as possible in a climatological sense and (3) models with too little wet days (precipitation above 0.1 mm) should be corrected accurately, which means that the wet day frequency is conserved. We improve the already existing quantile mapping approach so that it satisfies all three conditions. Our new method is called empirical percentile–percentile mapping (EPPM) which uses empirical distributions for meteorological variables and is therefore computationally inexpensive. The correction of precipitation is particularly challenging so our main focus is on precipitation. EPPM corrects the historical model data so that precipitation sums and wet days are equal to the observational data.