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Abstract:
Regional climate models provide an effective way to study the effects of land use changes on regional climate conditions. A precise land cover map is a precondition for land use change studies. We introduce a more realistic high-resolution land cover map, CORINE Land Cover (CLC), to replace the Global Land Cover Characteristics Database (GLCCD), which is used as a standard land cover map in the regional climate model REMO. In this study, present-day climate simulations over northern Europe are performed by using REMO at 18-km resolution with both CLC and GLCCD. Simulated maximum and minimum 2-m air temperatures, diurnal temperature range and precipitation are assessed with the observation-based E-OBS data. The updated CLC enhances the realism of the description of present-day land surface. However, biases from simulated climate conditions to observations are only marginally reduced while more improvements are expected to be achieved by further developments in model physics. © 2015, Finnish Environment Institute. All rights reserved.
