Abstract

ANDRADE F., Marcos F.  and  BLACUTT B., Luis A.. EVALUARON OF THE PRECIS REGIONAL CLIMATE MODEL FOR THE REGIÓN OF BOLIVIA: COMPARISON WITH GROUND BASED DATA. Revista Boliviana de Física [online]. 2010, vol.17, n.17, pp.1-12. ISSN 1562-3823.

The possible effects of climate change on regions like Bolivia are of great interest both at scientific and political lev el. Numerical climate models, both global and regional, are an important tool for studying such effects. However, in order to establish the reliability of future climate projections providedby such models is necessary to valídate its results. In this work the performance of the regional climate model PRECIS (Providing REgional Climates for Impacts Studies), developed at the Hadley Centre at the UK Met Office, is evalúated for the región of Bolivia. The comparison of temperature and precipitation of model outputs with observations taken by ground-based stations at monthly lev el for the period 1961-1990 shows that the model has a good performance for both parameters at the Bolivian lowlands (locations with an altitude below 500masl) while overestimates precipitation at regions sitúated at intermedíate heights (between 500 and 3500m asi) as well as at the Andean región (above 3500m asi). At the same time, the comparison shows that the model underestimates temperature (mean, máximum andminimum) at regions with altitudes above 500m asi, while it makes an acceptable work at the lowlands. Even though parametrization of clouds and precipitation in regions like the Altiplano and valleys is likely to contribute to the observed biases, an in depth study of the involved mechanisms is needed.

Keywords : climate change; Bolivia.