Evaluation of the CORDEX-SEACLID regional climate models performance in simulating rainfall characteristics of the wettest state in Malaysia

The objective of this article is to identify the Regional Climate Models (RCM) which is able to represent the characteristics of rainfall in the wettest state in Malaysia. This is done by evaluating the performance of seven RCM, generated by Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX)-Southeast Asia (SEACLID), on a 25x25km grid scale in simulating the rainfall amount over nine catchments in the area. Observed data of the nine catchments were obtained from the corresponding rainfall recording stations and has been used for performance evaluation of the considered RCMs outputs using several statistical validation tests. In addition, trends of several extreme rainfall indices as defined by ETCCDI (Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices) were analyzed and compared between the models. The trend analysis in this study served two purposes, which are for model comparison and to identify any possible extreme rainfall trend in the area. The result showed that although the performance of the models varied according to the validation tests applied, the IPSL-CM5A-LR (RegCM4) is so far the best model to be used for climate change impact study for future projections in Kelantan. In this regard, for local-scale climate projections, IPSL-CM5A-LR (RegCM4) can be used to assess the impact of potential extreme weather events in the future for mitigation purpose.