From daily climatic scenarios to hourly atmospheric forcing fields to force Soil-Vegetation-Atmosphere transfer models

International audienceThis paper presents a method to produce long term climatic forcing fields to force Soil-Vegetation-Atmosphere transfer (SVAT) models in off-line mode. The objective is to increase the temporal frequency of existent climate projections databases from daily frequency to hourly time step to be used in impact climate studies. A statistical clustering k-means method is used. A tens of clusters seems to be enough to describe the climate variability in term of wind regimes, precipitation and thermal and humidity amplitude. These clusters are identified in the future projections of climate and reconstructed sequences at hourly frequency are obtained for all the forcing variables needed by a SVAT model, typically: air temperature, specific humidity, wind speed and direction, precipitation, direct short-wave radiation, downward long-wave radiation, and scattered short-wave radiation. Eleven years of observations from two sites in France are used to illustrate the method: the Chartres station (Paris) and Blagnac station (Toulouse). The reconstruction algorithm is able to produce diurnal cycles that fits well with hourly series from observations (1998–2008; 1961–1990) and from climatic scenarios (1961–2100). The diurnal amplitude and mean value is well represented for variables with marked daily cycle as temperature or humidity. Changes in the mean wind direction are represented and, to a certain extent, changes in wind intensity are also retained. The mean precipitation is conserved during the day even if the method is not able to reproduce the short rain picks variability. Precipitation is used as input in the clusterization process so in clusters representative of rainy days some diurnal variability is nevertheless retained