Fang Shiqi, Majumder Reetam, Hector Emily, Reich Brian, Sankarasubramanian A
Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA.
Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA.
Sci Data. 2025 Jul 23;12(1):1279. doi: 10.1038/s41597-025-05478-8.
Global Climate Models (GCMs) are essential for climate projections but often exhibit biases, particularly in representing extremes and multivariate dependencies, which limit their utility in impact assessments. Traditional bias correction (BC) methods, such as quantile mapping, address marginal distributions but fail to correct joint extremes and cross-variable relationships. To address these challenges, we propose a Complete Density Correction using Normalizing Flows (CDC-NF), a novel method leveraging invertible transformations to adjust the full joint distribution of GCM outputs. Using observational data from NOAA nClimGrid-daily and CMIP6 GCM projections, The CDC-NF method was applied at a daily temporal resolution to precipitation and maximum temperature outputs from CMIP6 GCM projections. Compared to traditional BC methods, CDC-NF demonstrated substantial improvements in Wasserstein Distance, RMSE, and PBIAS, particularly for the 90th percentile extremes. Additionally, it preserved cross-correlation structure, enhancing reliability in modeling compound extremes. CDC-NF represents a significant advancement in BC, providing a robust framework for addressing GCM biases and improving climate impact studies in a changing climate.
全球气候模型(GCMs)对于气候预测至关重要,但常常表现出偏差,尤其是在表示极端情况和多变量依赖性方面,这限制了它们在影响评估中的效用。传统的偏差校正(BC)方法,如分位数映射,处理的是边际分布,但无法校正联合极端情况和跨变量关系。为应对这些挑战,我们提出了一种使用归一化流的完全密度校正方法(CDC-NF),这是一种利用可逆变换来调整GCM输出的完整联合分布的新方法。利用美国国家海洋和大气管理局(NOAA)nClimGrid每日观测数据和CMIP6 GCM预测数据,CDC-NF方法以每日时间分辨率应用于CMIP6 GCM预测的降水和最高温度输出。与传统的BC方法相比,CDC-NF在瓦瑟斯坦距离、均方根误差和偏差百分比方面有显著改进,特别是对于第90百分位数的极端情况。此外,它保留了互相关结构,提高了对复合极端情况建模的可靠性。CDC-NF代表了偏差校正方面的重大进展,为解决GCM偏差和改进气候变化下的气候影响研究提供了一个强大的框架。