Modelling the climate of South West Asia.

The performance of a regional climate model (RegCM2) is examined for a region of southwest Asia including Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and southeastern Turkey. Model output is verified against climatological monthly precipitation and temperature surfaces created by interpolated FAO/WMO station data using a CRESSMAN technique with a variable radius of influence, and snow cover extent in the Zagros and Tauros mountains as determined using 13 years of AVHRR composite data. The model performs well in terms of temperature but relatively poorly in terms of precipitation. The model is particularly sensitive to the presence (or absence) of a very narrow mountain range along the Mediterranean coast. It also tends to overestimate the snow cover extent in the mountains.

Figure 3: Snow cover extent.