Performance Evaluation of a Regional Simulation with COSMO-CLM in the Alpine Space

SUMMARY This paper analyzes the capabilities of Limited Area Model COSMO-CLM to simulate the main features of the observed climate over an area characterized by complex terrain. A simulation driven by ERA40 Reanalysis of the XX century climate (1971-2000) has been performed at a spatial resolution of 8 km, in order to provide an assessment of regional model performance on local scale for impact studies. 2-meters temperature (minimum, maximum and average values) and total precipitation have been analyzed, comparing their values with two observational datasets: ETH for precipitation and EOBS for temperature.