JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 115, D10101, doi:10.

1029/2009JD012882, 2010
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Bias correction of monthly precipitation and temperature fields

from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change AR4 models
using equidistant quantile matching
Haibin Li,1 Justin Sheffield,1 and Eric F. Wood1
Received 23 July 2009; revised 24 November 2009; accepted 23 December 2009; published 18 May 2010.

[1] A new quantile‐based mapping method is developed for the bias correction of
monthly global circulation model outputs. Compared to the widely used quantile‐based
matching method that assumes stationarity and only uses the cumulative distribution
functions (CDFs) of the model and observations for the baseline period, the proposed
method incorporates and adjusts the model CDF for the projection period on the basis
of the difference between the model and observation CDFs for the training (baseline) period.
Thus, the method explicitly accounts for distribution changes for a given model between
the projection and baseline periods. We demonstrate the use of the new method over
northern Eurasia. We fit a four‐parameter beta distribution to monthly temperature fields
and discuss the sensitivity of the results to the choice of distribution range parameters. For
monthly precipitation data, a mixed gamma distribution is used that accounts for the
intermittent nature of rainfall. To test the fidelity of the proposed method, we choose
1970–1999 as the baseline training period and then randomly select 30 years from 1901–
1999 as the projection test period. The bootstrapping is repeated 30 times to mimic
different climate conditions that may occur, and the results suggest that both methods are
comparable when applied to the 20th century for both temperature and precipitation for
the examined quartiles. We also discuss the dependence of the bias correction results on
the choice of time period for training. This indicates that the remaining biases in the bias‐
corrected time series are directly tied to the model’s performance during the training
period, and therefore care should be taken when using a particular training time period.
When applied to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fourth assessment report
(AR4) A2 climate scenario projection, the data time series after bias correction from both
methods exhibit similar spatial patterns. However, over regions where the climate
model shows large changes in projected variability, there are discernable differences
between the methods. The proposed method is more sensitive to a reduction in variability,
exemplified by wintertime temperature. Further synthetic experiments using the lower 33%
and upper 33% of the full data set as the validation data suggest that the proposed
equidistance quantile‐matching method is more efficient in reducing biases than the
traditional CDF mapping method for changing climates, especially for the tails of the
distribution. This has important consequences for the occurrence and intensity of future
projected extreme events such as heat waves, floods, and droughts. As the new method is
simple to implement and does not require substantial computational time, it can be used to
produce auxiliary ensemble scenarios for various climate impact‐oriented applications.
Citation: Li, H., J. Sheffield, and E. F. Wood (2010), Bias correction of monthly precipitation and temperature fields from
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change AR4 models using equidistant quantile matching, J. Geophys. Res., 115, D10101,
doi:10.1029/2009JD012882.

1. Introduction making to cope with the consequences of changing climate

(World Modeling Summit for Climate Prediction, 2008;
[2] Global circulation models (GCMs) are an important
http://wcrp.ipsl.jussieu.fr/Workshops/ModellingSummit/
tool in assessing climate change and in helping decision
Documents/FinalSummitStat_6_6.pdf). These numerical cou-
1
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton
pled models, based on the governing physical laws and
University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA. expressed in forms of primitive equations, represent large‐
scale (generally hundreds of kilometers) flow patterns and
Copyright 2010 by the American Geophysical Union. dynamics for Earth system components, including the atmo-
0148‐0227/10/2009JD012882

D10101 1 of 20
D10101 LI ET AL.: BIAS CORRECTION OF IPCC MODEL OUTPUTS
sphere, ocean, land surface, and sea ice. It is on such spatial
scales that GCMs exhibit encouraging skill in simulating
climate responses [Randall et al., 2007]. However, their
ability to capture local‐scale (usually tens of kilometers) or
even regional‐scale patterns that are directly relevant to end
users for decision making and mitigation strategy planning
is less promising, especially for precipitation [e.g., Wood et
al., 2004]. Thus, there is a mismatch between the capacity of
current GCMs and desired details at local scales. What is
more, imposed on this is the inevitable model bias due to
inadequate knowledge of key physical processes (e.g., cloud
physics) and simplification of the natural heterogeneity of
the climate system that exist at finer spatial scales. Although
systematic improvements have been reported in the latest
generation of climate models [Reichler and Kim, 2008], a
general cold bias is still evident for temperature, and sub-
stantial precipitation biases, especially in the tropics, are not
uncommon in many models [Randall et al., 2007].
[3] Downscaling approaches, either physical process‐
based dynamic downscaling or statistically based ones, are
required to remove systematic biases in models and trans-
form simulated climate patterns at coarse grid to a finer
spatial resolution of local interest [Maurer and Hidalgo,
2008]. The dynamic approach uses limited area models or
high‐resolution GCMs to simulate physical processes at
fine scales with boundary conditions given by the coarse‐
resolution GCMs. The statistical approach transforms coarse‐
scale climate projections to a finer scale through trained
transfer functions that connect the climate at the two spatial
resolutions. To capture the anthropogenic climate change
signal, the choice of predictor variables is a critical step
[Hewitson and Crane, 2006]. Two important considerations
are that (1) the selected predictors should reflect the primary
circulation dynamics of the atmosphere reasonable well and
(2) there is a physical connection to the predictant. There
are also statistical downscaling methods primarily for the
purpose of bias correction which involve some form of
transfer function derived from cumulative distribution
functions (CDFs) of observations and model simulations
[e.g., Ines and Hansen, 2006; Piani et al., 2010; Wood et
al., 2004]. The advantages and disadvantages of both
approaches have been thoroughly documented [e.g., Fowler
et al., 2007; Wilby et al., 2009]. The key advantage of the
statistical approach is the lower computational requirement
compared to the dynamical model–based alternative, and
thus, statistical downscaling approaches are widely used in
climate impact–related research work.
[4] An underlying assumption for statistical approaches is
that the statistical model which connects the large‐scale
circulation and the local climate (or the transfer function
relating observations to model simulations) remains un-
changed in an altered climate, which may not hold. How-
ever, if the time series used to train the statistical model is
long enough, many different situations, including the altered
climate, may be included [Zorita and von Storch, 1999]. In
applying transfer functions to future climate projections,
many existing statistical bias correction methods simply
assume the higher‐order moments do not change much in
the future climate scenario, yet the latest report from the
IPCC suggests otherwise [Meehl et al., 2007]. The non-
stationarity issue has a profound influence on climate impact
studies. Neglecting changes in the distribution, particularly
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higher‐order moments, may result in underestimation of
future climate extremes such as heat waves related to tem-
perature or droughts and floods associated with precipitation
extremes. In this study, we focus on statistical bias correction
and propose a simple methodology called equal distance‐
based quantile‐to‐quantile matching to correct monthly pre-
cipitation and temperature fields from the World Climate
Research Program’s Coupled Model Intercomparison Proj-
ect phase 3 (CMIP3) GCM simulations that formed the basis
for the fourth assessment report (AR4) of the IPCC. The
proposed method has the advantage that it explicitly in-
corporates changes in the distribution in the future climate.
We will show that changes in the tails of the distribution
can be better reflected with our method when compared to
the traditional quantile‐based mapping method (see section 4
for details).
[5] The paper is structured as follows. In section 2, we
describe the study domain, followed by the data and meth-
odology in sections 3 and 4, respectively. Section 5 presents
results of the methodology validation. Section 6 details the
application of the methodology to future projections of
precipitation and temperature. Finally, discussion and con-
clusions are given in section 7.
2. Study Domain
[6] We select the Northern Eurasian Earth Science Part-
nership Initiative (NEESPI) domain as the study area, which
is defined as being between 15°E in the west and the Pacific
Coast in the east and between 40°N in the south and north to
the Arctic Ocean coastal zone. In this study, we extend the
NEESPI domain to 34°N. The NEESPI area accounts for
about 19% of the global land surface, covering diverse cli-
mate zones from Mediterranean climate in the southwest
coast to subarctic climate in Siberia in the far northeast. This
region is also characterized by a carbon‐rich, cold region
component of the Earth system with potentially large im-
plications for the global climate system [Groisman et al.,
2009]. The NEESPI region experiences an amplified re-
sponse to climate forcing due to positive feedbacks [Moritz
et al., 2002] related to, for example, albedo reduction,
glacial and sea ice retreat, and vegetation expansion pro-
cesses. Climatic changes have already been reported in this
region in recent decades, including increased winter air
temperature [Rawlins and Willmott, 2003; Robeson, 2004],
reduced snow cover [Serreze et al., 2000], reduced sea ice
retreat [Serreze et al., 2003; Serreze and Francis, 2006],
and increased runoff and river discharge [Peterson et al.,
2002]. These rapid changes have raised concerns of
abrupt climate change. For regions north of 60°N for the 21st
century, regional model simulations project continuous
warming (particularly large in autumn and early winter,
being 2°C–4°C higher than spring and summer) and an
overall wetter climate. The associated impacts include
widespread reductions in snow cover and a shortened snow
cover season, accompanied by more frequent climate ex-
tremes [Christensen et al., 2007] that may have devastating
consequences. A recent study by Solomon et al. [2009] points
out that greenhouse gas–induced changes may be irreversible
in the time frame of a million years. Thus, there is an urgent
need to investigate potential changes, especially those be-
yond the climatological change in this region, to form the
D10101 LI ET AL.: BIAS CORRECTION OF IPCC MODEL OUTPUTS
scientific basis for possible disaster mitigation and design
strategies for adaptation.
3. Data Sets
[7] The observations used in this study are gridded
monthly temperature and precipitation data prepared by the
Climate Research Unit (CRU) of University of East Anglia
at 0.5° resolution for 1901–2000 [New et al., 2002]. The
CRU data set is one of the best available consistent long‐
term gridded observational records. These data are averaged
to 1.0° resolution. It should be noted that the CRU data set
does not make adjustments for gauge undercatch of snow-
fall. For high‐latitude basins, this means wintertime snow-
falls may be underestimated by the CRU data set, and some
modeling has shown that this may be important [e.g., Tian et
al., 2007]. However, other studies have shown that gauge
undercatch adjustments overpredict regional observations of
precipitation and snow water equivalent [Troy et al., 2008].
For illustration purposes, we use the model outputs from the
Parallel Climate Model (PCM1) [Meehl et al., 2001, 2004;
Washington et al., 2000] developed at the National Center
for Atmospheric Research. We choose to use one ensemble
member for simplicity and to illustrate the method. How-
ever, the method can be readily applied to an ensemble of
realizations to form an envelope to reflect the uncertainty in
future projections. We use the model data sets for the 20th
century (20C3M) and the Special Report on Emissions
Scenarios A2 future scenarios for 2001–2099 [Nakićenović
and Swart, 2000], which were run as part of CMIP3. The
A2 scenario is generally regarded as a worst‐case scenario
that sees a fourfold to fivefold increase in CO2 emissions
over 2000–2099, during which CO2 concentrations increase
from about 350 to 850 ppm. The model data are regridded to
the same resolution as the observations (1.0°) using bilinear
interpolation. Thus, the preprocessed model outputs are a
combination of inherent model errors and uncertainties in-
troduced by the interpolation scheme. If a much finer res-
olution is desired, a more sophisticated spatial downscaling
scheme utilizing auxiliary information, for example, eleva-
tion and pressure level, may be used. The CRU data are used
to bias correct the 20C3M model data, and these corrections
are then applied to the A2 future projections to provide bias‐
corrected future climate data.
[8] Figure 1 compares the basic statistics of temperature
for the observations and 20C3M data for 1970–1999 and the
A2 scenario data for 2070–2099. The model has a cool bias,
most noticeable in higher latitudes, which is typical of most
climate models [Randall et al., 2007]. High latitudes gen-
erally show stronger variability regardless of the season. For
the baseline period of 1970–1999, PCM1 captures the spatial
distribution of regions with strong variability but exaggerates
wintertime variability. For July, there is less agreement for
high‐variability regions between the PCM1 and CRU data. In
addition to an increase in mean for the future projection, the
model predicts a decrease in wintertime variability but an
increase in summertime. The higher‐order moment skew also
changes in the future. It is clear that change in the distribution
of the future climate is not limited to shifts in the mean;
there are also changes in higher‐order moments. These
changes are more important for resources managers and
stakeholders, as the consequences are usually more devas-
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D10101
tating. This supports our intention to develop the new
quantile‐mapping technique that deals with nonstationarity
in climate time series and particularly in higher moments.
On an annual scale, a general cold bias exists in the multi-
model averages, usually less than 2°C outside of the polar
regions. Individual CMIP3 models can exhibit larger errors.
For PCM1, the errors are as large as 5°C in the Sahara desert
and coastal areas of midlatitudes to high latitudes [Randall
et al., 2007]. In terms of seasonal patterns, the cold bias
in summer (July) is more pronounced than that in winter
(January). For 1970–1999, the spatially averaged mean bias
is about −1.2°C in January and up to −3.9°C in July.
[9] For precipitation (Figure 2), the NEESPI region has a
very diverse climate, characterized by low precipitation over
the majority of inland areas in wintertime as a result of the
strong influence from cold and dry polar air masses from
high latitudes. The exception is the Mediterranean region,
which is characterized by a seasonal peak in winter. In
summertime, the Asian monsoon brings moist air from the
tropical Pacific Ocean, resulting in high precipitation in East
Asia. Extremely dry summers for the Mediterranean coasts
are caused by the sinking air of the subtropical high. The
large‐scale spatial structure of modeled precipitation agrees
with observations for the period 1970–1999, suggesting that
the model captures the large‐scale dynamics reasonably
well. The precipitation brought by extratropical cyclones
along midlatitude storm tracks through western Europe and
into Eurasia [Money, 2000] is overestimated by the model.
This has also been noted by Randall et al. [2007], who
found a positive bias in the PCM1 compared to the Climate
Prediction Center Merged Analysis of Precipitation [Xie and
Arkin, 1997] climatology over Eurasia. This may be an in-
dication that the model‐simulated westerlies are too strong
or the model topography fields are oversimplified (too flat),
allowing depressions to penetrate farther eastward into
central Eurasia. Also, the precipitation variability is under-
estimated during the monsoon season for coastal areas of
East Asia. The same can be seen for the Mediterranean region
during wintertime. Regions with high precipitation are usu-
ally characterized by relatively high variability. For CMIP3
models in general, they adequately capture most climatic
features, for example, lower precipitation at higher latitudes.
The models also represent well a local minimum in precipi-
tation near the equatorial Pacific and local maxima at mid-
latitudes due to frequent storms. Despite the apparent skill
exhibited by the CMIP3 multimodel mean, models individ-
ually still display substantial biases that may exceed the
magnitude of the mean observed precipitation climatology in
the tropics in particular [Randall et al., 2007]. Under the A2
scenario, July precipitation is projected to increase more
than 50% for the Tibetan Plateau, which is picked up by
most CMIP3 models, and the higher the elevation, the more
the increase. A reduction in precipitation is projected for
central Asia and southern Europe, due to more easterly and
anticyclonic flow. However, there is less consensus among
GCMs for the summertime precipitation decrease for these
regions [Christensen et al., 2007].
4. Methodology
[10] The goal of this study is to develop a simple and
effective statistical bias correction method. The basic prin-
D10101 LI ET AL.: BIAS CORRECTION OF IPCC MODEL OUTPUTS D10101

Figure 1. (top) January and (bottom) July temperature statistics. (left) Observations (1970–1999).
(middle) PCM1 (1970–1999) for the 20C3M scenario. (right) PCM1 (2070–2099) for the A2 scenario.
For each month, the maps show the statistics for mean (m), standard deviation (s), and skew (g).

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Figure 2. Same as Figure 1 but for precipitation (units: mm/month for m and s).

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Figure 3. Illustration of methodology of (a) CDFm and (b) EDCDFm using synthetic generated winter-
time temperature data for a grid point. Solid black line shows observations (OBS). Thick dashed line
shows model simulation for current climate (MODc). Thin dashed line shows model simulation for future
projection (MODp). Dotted‐dashed line shows CDFm in Figure 3a and EDCDFm in Figure 3b. See text
for details.

ciple, regardless of the complexity of the statistical model, is
to establish a statistical relationship or transfer function
between model outputs and observations based on available
historical data sets and then apply the established transfer
function to future model projections to infer the possible
trajectory of future observations. The quantile‐based map-
ping method (CDF matching (CDFm hereafter)) [Panofsky
and Brier, 1968] maps the distribution of monthly GCM
variables (precipitation and temperature) onto that of gridded
observed data. The method is a relatively simple approach
that has been successfully used in hydrologic and many
other climate impact studies [e.g., Cayan et al., 2008;
Hayhoe et al., 2004; Maurer and Hidalgo, 2008]. For a
climate variable x, the method can be written as



~xm-p:adjst: ¼ Fo1
-c Fm-c xm-p ; ð1Þ
where F is the CDF of either the observations (o) or model
(m) for a historic training period or current climate (c) or
future projection period (p). Basically, to bias correct model
values for a future period, we first find the corresponding
percentile values for these future projection points in the
CDF of the model for the training period and then locate the
observed values for the same CDF values of the observa-
tions. These are the model values after bias correction.
Figure 3a illustrates how the method works. The CDFs for
the observations and model are constructed from the January
temperature field for a point near 60°N, 150°E. According to
equation (1), a value of 25 in a future projection time series
corresponds to a Fm‐train value of 0.2 under the current
climate, which can be transferred to the observed value
according to the quantile function of the observations (the
solid circle). The major advantage of the method is that it
adjusts all moments (i.e., the entire distribution matches that
of the observations for the training period) while maintain-
ing the rank correlation between models and observations.
However, an underlying assumption of the method is that
the climate distribution does not change much over time,
that is, it is stationary in the variance and skew of the dis-
tribution, and only the mean changes. This, however, may
not hold [Meehl et al., 2007; Milly et al., 2008] with the
possibility that the model projects changes in the higher
moments as well, as shown in Figures 1 and 2. One way to
allow for this is to incorporate information from the CDF of
the model projection instead of assuming that the historic
model distribution applies to the future period. For a given
percentile, we assume that the difference between the model
and observed value during the training period also applies to
the future period, which means the adjustment function
remains the same. However, the difference between the CDFs
for the future and historic periods is also taken into account.
Accordingly, the method can be written mathematically as





~xm-p:adjst: ¼ xm-p þ Fo1
-c Fm-p xm-p  Fm1-c Fm-p xm-p : ð2Þ
This method is termed the equidistant CDF matching
method (EDCDFm). Figure 3b illustrates how the method
works. A value of 25 corresponds to 0.05 in the CDF of the
future model projection. For the 5th percentile, the differ-
ence between the model and observations under current
climate is subtracted from the model projection to get the
bias‐corrected value (the solid circle in Figure 3b, which, in
this example, is different from that estimated by the CDFm
method). The same procedure is repeated for every point for

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the future projection time series, which can then be used to
construct the CDF for the bias‐corrected future projection
time series (the dotted‐dashed line). If the distribution for
the future climate is the same as the current one (training
period), the results from the CDFm and EDCDFm methods
will be identical. Moreover, if the changes in variability
are small, results from both methods will be close. In this
example, however, the distribution for the model has
changed from the training period to the future period. As a
comparison, the distribution function using the method of
EDCDFm is different from that using CDFm, especially near
the tails. Figure 3 is solely for the purpose of illustration; the
method is validated comprehensively in sections 5 and 7.
[11] If empirical CDFs are used for the quantile mapping,
frequent interpolation or extrapolation is required, which
is unsatisfactory. We therefore fit parametric distributions
to both the temperature and precipitation fields. A four‐
parameter beta distribution is fitted to temperature fields:
1
f ð x; a; b; p; qÞ ¼ ð x  aÞp1
Bð p; qÞðb  aÞpþq1
 ðb  xÞq1 a  x  b; p; q > 0;
where B is the beta function. We first approximate the range
parameters (a and b) as the extreme values from the data,
extended by a certain percentage of the standard deviation
(s), similar to the approach by Watterson [2008]. Once the
range parameters are determined, the shape parameters p and
q can be estimated by the method of maximum likelihood
estimation. To investigate the sensitivity of the fitted dis-
tribution to the choice of range parameters, we extended the
extreme values from 5% to 200% of s. The differences
between the constructed CDFs are small once the selected
percentage value is above 30%. We therefore set range
parameters for every grid point as the extreme values
extended by half of the s values. Our analysis suggests
that this value is adequate to enclose possible extreme values
in future projections.
[12] Precipitation is intermittent in nature, and even at
monthly time scales a mixture of months with no rain and
months with rain can occur, especially for dry regions. We
construct a mixed gamma distribution to account for this
feature. The CDF for the mixed distribution can be written as
Gð xÞ ¼ ð1  PÞH ð xÞ þ pF ð xÞ;
where P is the percentage of months with rain and H(x) is a
step function having a value of zero when there is no rain and
a value of 1 when there is rain. For the portion of a given
time series with rain, a two‐parameter gamma distribution is
used:
ex=
f ð x; k; Þ ¼ xk1 for x > 0 and k;  > 0:
k ðk Þ
At the monthly scale, the majority of the NEESPI region has
a value of 1 for P. Regions with values of <1 are limited to
small dry areas: centered on central Asian countries east of
the Caspian Sea (including northern Iran, Afghanistan,
Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) in summer and western
China and the Tibetan Plateau in winter. Note that the
PCM1 model roughly captures the geographical distribution
D10101
for the summer dry regions but totally misses the dry region
in wintertime, and the implications of this in the bias cor-
rection are discussed in section 5.1.
5. Methodology Validation
5.1. Validation Using a Bootstrapping Approach
[13] The validation of a method or model is done tradi-
tionally by testing its performance for a specific historical
period, say, 30 years, for which observations are available, a
so‐called “pseudoprojection.” However, the performance
statistics calculated in this way may not be representative, as
the results may be different if we choose a different vali-
dation period. This may arise since the model performance
is time dependent, particularly for areas with pronounced
seasonality and large variability, for example, wintertime
temperature for continental interior and summertime pre-
cipitation for high latitudes. Ideally, we should use as many
different periods as possible for the validation, and some
statistics can then be derived to assess the performance of
ð3Þ the methodology. Limited by the available observational
records (100 years), we use a bootstrapping approach. We
also sampled continuous overlapping 30 year periods (e.g.,
1901–1930, 1911–1940), but these gave essentially similar
results to those of the bootstrapping approach. Specifically,
we choose 1970–1999 as the training period, in accordance
with many climate impact studies. Then we randomly select
30 years out of 100 (1901–2000) as the test data. This
procedure is repeated 30 times. The model performance
is then evaluated in terms of biases in reproducing the ob-
servations for selected quantiles. The results collectively tell
how well the method performs using 1970–1999 as the
baseline climatology.
[14] Figure 4 shows the spatial patterns for median values
averaged from the 30 bootstrap experiments using the
CDFm and EDCDFm methods. For temperature, the spatial
patterns of the bias‐corrected fields resemble the observa-
tions for both the cold (January) and warm (July) seasons
(Figure 4). Similar conclusions can be drawn for other
quartiles as well. There are distinct differences between the
January and July model biases. For January, PCM1 is too
warm for a large area of continental interior and northern
Asia north of 60°N but is too cold for the northwest and
southeast portions (Figures 4a and 4b). Overall, PCM1 ex-
ð4Þ hibits a moderate cold bias when averaged spatially but with
a large spread in winter (Figure 5). The results after bias
correction show a dramatic reduction in the mean and range
of the biases. The results for the EDCDFm and CDFm
methods are very similar (Figures 4c, 4d, and 5). For July,
the model shows a strong and systematic cold bias for nearly
the entire NEESPI region (Figures 4e and 4f) with a mean
bias of over 4° for all quartiles (Figure 6), though there is a
ð5Þ much smaller variability compared to the results for January.
Both the EDCDFm and CDFm methods are very effective in
terms of reducing the original model biases (Figures 4g, 4h,
and 6). The remaining biases, after bias correction, also tend
to cluster more tightly around zero compared to the raw
PCM1 data, indicating a much smaller mean and greatly
reduced variability (Figure 6). It is worthwhile to note that
the EDCDFm and CDFm methods exhibit comparable skill
with no one method being superior to the other, at least for
the 20th century data and for the examined quartile values.
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Figure 4. Spatial distribution of temperature (median values for (a–d) January and (e–h) July) for the ob-
servations, model, EDCDFm, and CDFm bias‐corrected data sets averaged over the 30 bootstrap samples.

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Figure 5. (top) Mean biases for the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles (temperature) for January. Histograms
of (bottom left) model biases, (bottom middle) results from the EDCDFm, and (bottom right) results from
the CDFm for the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles.

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[15] For precipitation, an issue arises in some dry regions
where the model has essentially no skill at all: either (1) the
observations have no or very little rainfall in a few months,
but the model indicates that it rains every month and total
rainfall can be of the order of 1000 mm, or (2) the ob-
servations indicate significant rainfall (hundreds of milli-
meters), but the model is very dry. This issue arises for
about 0.4% of grid points in January and 0.2% in July. For
these grid points, we use the ratio of the future to the current
climate in the model instead of the difference as the transfer
function to adjust the observed CDFs. The method works
well for those problematic grid points. As the model shows
such poor skill for these grid points, it may even be more
appropriate to directly use the observed climatology (perhaps
with the addition of some white noise) instead of attempting
to bias correct the model data.
[16] Figure 7 shows the median values for the precipitation
field (January in Figures 7a–7d and July in Figures 7e–7h).
Again, both the EDCDFm and CDFm methods show im-
provements compared to the original model outputs with
more realistic spatial patterns. In January, the negative bias in
the PCM1 for the Mediterranean regions and positive bias for
the East Asian Peninsula (Figures 7a and 7b) are substan-
tially reduced by both methods (Figures 7c and 7d). The
underestimation of summertime Asian monsoon rainfall for
East Asia is also dramatically improved after bias correction
(Figures 7e–7h). In terms of the remaining biases, the spatial
patterns for the different quartiles are very similar for the two
methods (Figures 8 and 9). Over regions with relatively high
precipitation and high variability (Figure 2) the biases tend to
also be relatively large. This is understandable, as such
regions are usually characterized by strong dynamics,
which can be difficult to simulate. Both the EDCDFm and
CDFm are able to remove biases considerably, but less
skillfully in July compared to January. Relatively large
biases are still apparent for regions with high precipitation
and large variability (up to 30 mm/month), especially for
July, though of a much smaller magnitude than the model
biases.
[17] The reason for the similar performance from both
statistical bias correction methods may be explained by the
way the sampling is done in the bootstrapping experiment
and the very limited length of the climate records (30 out of
100 points for each sample). Given long enough climate
records and substantially more samples, we may pick up
extreme distributions, which can be used to investigate the
sensitivity of methods to data having quite different dis-
tributions. As these conditions, especially the former, are
hard to satisfy, we have designed another synthetic ex-
periment specifically for the purpose of examining climate
extremes.
5.2. A Synthetic Experiment for Bias Correction
of Climate Extremes
[18] Our main goal is to develop a method that can better
handle a changing climate, including changes in variability
and extreme monthly values. Therefore, a key question is
whether the EDCDFm is more efficient in dealing with
changed variability than the CDFm. To answer this ques-
tion, we conducted a synthetic experiment using the 20th
century temperature data. First, we used the entire 20th
century data (1901–1999) for training and then chose the
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lower 33% and upper 33% of the full 20th century data for
testing, thus representing the two extreme situations. We
then calculated the mean absolute biases, root‐mean‐square
error (RMSE), and reduction of RMSE (one minus the ratio
between the RMSE from the bias correction method and
RMSE from PCM1) for the 5th (95th) percentiles of the
lower 33% and upper 33% of the full data record. The results
are presented in Table 1. First, both methods show significant
reduction in all error statistics analyzed, in line with the
findings reported in section 5.1. The reduction of RMSE
ranges from 70% in January to about 95% in July. Both
methods show smaller mean biases and RMSE in both
wintertime and summertime, with greater skill in summer-
time as a result of the smaller variability. From Table 1, we
may say that the EDCDFm method is superior to the CDFm
method. The former shows, on average, a 4–5% (10%)
further reduction in RMSE in summer (winter). Thus, the
EDCDFm developed in this study seems more skillful in
dealing with changed variability.
5.3. Choice of Training Period
[19] Another question that has not been addressed in the
literature is how the results would differ when using another
time period for training. To shed light on this, we carried out
another bootstrapping test for the January temperature field
using 1901–1930 as the training period. The spatial patterns
are similar to those shown in Figure 4a. Both statistical bias
correction methods produce data in better agreement with
observations. However, it is also interesting to note that the
spatial patterns for the presented mean biases differ from
those depicted in Figure 5 (top) in terms of the sign of the
mean biases: the slight positive biases for the southeast
when using 1970–1999 switch to negative biases when
using 1901–1930, and the northwest of Russia now exhibits
positive biases (not shown). The analysis suggests that the
bias‐corrected time series are directly tied to the model’s
performance during the training period, supporting the ar-
gument that model biases are time dependent, and agrees
with the finding by Reifen and Toumi [2009]. They dem-
onstrated that GCMs that perform well in one period may
not necessarily perform equally well for another period,
possibly a result of nonstationarity of climate feedback
strength or a model’s representation of external forcings
(e.g., CO2 concentration, aerosols). The results indicate that
care should be taken when using a specified time period for
training. However, if the temporal variation of the bias has a
much smaller magnitude than the bias itself, we may simply
choose a period we feel most confident with if the main
objective is bias removal. The choice of the past few dec-
ades (1970–1999) as the training period for bias correction
of future projections in many climate downscaling studies
may be justified for the following reasons: (1) recent
observations are more reliable, and (2) recent decades have
experienced warming and thus are more likely to resemble
future projections.
6. Future Projection
[20] In this section, we use the EDCDFm method to
downscale a future model run of the A2 scenario, a high‐
emission scenario that is associated with high population
growth, regionally oriented economic development, and
D10101 LI ET AL.: BIAS CORRECTION OF IPCC MODEL OUTPUTS D10101

Figure 6. Same as Figure 5 but for July.

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D10101 LI ET AL.: BIAS CORRECTION OF IPCC MODEL OUTPUTS D10101

Figure 7. Spatial distribution of precipitation (median values for (a–d) January and (e–h) July) for the
observations, model, EDCDFm, and CDFm bias‐corrected data sets averaged over the 30 bootstrap
samples.

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D10101 LI ET AL.: BIAS CORRECTION OF IPCC MODEL OUTPUTS D10101

Figure 8. (top) January mean biases for the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles for precipitation. Histograms
of bias for (bottom left) the model, (bottom middle) results from the EDCDFm method, and (bottom right)
results from the CDFm method for the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles.

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D10101 LI ET AL.: BIAS CORRECTION OF IPCC MODEL OUTPUTS D10101

Figure 9. Same as Figure 8 but for July.

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D10101 LI ET AL.: BIAS CORRECTION OF IPCC MODEL OUTPUTS
Table 1. Summary of Statistics for the Synthetic Bias Correction Experiments Using the Lower 33% and Upper 33% of the Full 20th
Century Data Sets for Temperaturea
Januaryb
5% of Lower 33% 95% of Upper 33%
I II III I II
MAB 4.26 0.95 1.70 0.52 0.12
RMSE 7.10 1.30 2.08 4.56 0.68
R‐RMSE (%) 81.71 70.63 85.05
a
See text for details about the experiment design. MAB, mean absolute bias; RMSE, root mean square error; R‐ RMSE, reduction, defined as 1‐RMSEBC/
RMSEPCM1, where RMSEBC represents RMSE model outputs after bias correction. The statistics represent spatial averages.
b
I, PCM1; II, EDCDFm; III, CDFm.
slow technological change [Nakićenović and Swart, 2000].
The objectives of this are twofold: first, to see how the bias‐
corrected future projection compares to the original PCM1
model output and, second, for such a high‐emission scenario
with associated changes in temperature and precipitation, to
see how different the results are when using the EDCDFm
or CDFm. We present the results for the period 2070–2099.
[21] For temperature, the two methods give very similar
spatial patterns for the mean and variability (Figure 10).
Compared to the original model projections, both methods
show higher temperatures in July, suggesting a much
stronger warming will occur (because of the cold 20th
century bias in the model, which the methods correct for). In
January, a colder northern Asia and warmer northwest and
southeast are expected at the end of the 21st century under
the A2 scenario. These features are consistent with the
validation results discussed in section 5. The bias‐corrected
projections show a dramatic reduction in variability for large
areas in January. On the other hand, enhanced variability is
evident for Barents Sea coastal areas from both downscaling
methods in July, a result of a combination of underestimated
variability for the baseline period and increased variability
in the future projection. However, there are some subtle
differences, primarily related to the variability in January:
the EDCDFm method shows smaller variability for the
eastern coast and the central and eastern parts of northern
Asia compared to that from the CDFm method (Figure 10).
The reduced variability for these regions is a reflection
of the method’s adjustment to the exaggerated variability for
the current climate and a reduced variability in future pro-
jection by PCM1. For these regions, EDCDFm tends to have
a distribution with higher values for lower percentiles and
lower values for higher percentiles. The further away from
the 50th percentile, the larger the differences between these
two methods, exceeding 1°C near the tails in January
(Figure 11, top). The differences in July are relatively smaller
in both magnitude and geographical coverage (Figure 11,
bottom). The results also suggest that EDCDFm is more
sensitive to reduced variability than the CDFm counterpart.
Comparatively, July differences between these two methods
are less discernable, though results from EDCDFm are about
0.5°C–1°C higher than those from CDFm for the coastal
areas of the Kara Sea and Laptev Sea. The values between
the 25th to 75th percentiles are comparable. The differences
are more apparent for percentiles below the 5th and above
95th percentiles for January.
[22] The spatial structure of precipitation after bias cor-
rection is quite similar for the two methods (Figure 12). In
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Julyb
5% of Lower 33% 95% of Upper 33%
III I II III I II III
−0.47 4.51 0.04 0.13 4.32 0.06 0.16
1.28 5.24 0.25 0.50 4.87 0.29 0.48
71.90 95.18 90.49 93.99 90.09
wintertime, the bias‐corrected precipitation is higher for
the Mediterranean region and the northwest of Russia. A
reduced precipitation amount is observed for Japan. In
summertime, both downscaling methods suggest higher
precipitation for East Asia, particularly for east coastal
China, the Korean Peninsula, and Japan. These changes
seem reasonable considering the biases in the model‐simulated
precipitation for the training period. The differences between
these two methods are more subtle and isolated. With respect
to differences for given percentiles, differences are small for
lower percentile values, which comes as no surprise because
the lower percentiles correspond to low precipitation
amounts; thus, the absolute differences are small. On the other
hand, higher percentiles correspond to higher precipitation
amounts; thus, the absolute differences can be relatively large
(up to 10 mm/month), especially for regions where the model
shows marked changes in variability.
7. Discussion and Concluding Remarks
[23] We have developed a new quantile‐based mapping
method, called EDCDFm, for the purpose of bias correction
of GCMs near surface meteorological fields and compared
it to the traditional CDFm. Different from most previous
studies, which usually only select one time period for vali-
dation, a bootstrapping method is used that samples the full
historic record to test the fidelity of the downscaling. This
gives an indication of the robustness of the method and
highlights regions of high confidence or large uncertainty.
Both methods are able to reduce biases in the PCM1 model
temperature and precipitation fields significantly. The vali-
dation results from the bootstrapping experiment suggest
that the EDCDFm is comparable to the traditional quantile‐
based mapping method if we use 1970–1999 as the training
period.
[24] We further designed a synthetic experiment to in-
vestigate the efficiency of both methods in reducing climate
model bias in a synthetically generated changing climate.
The analysis for selected statistical metrics (mean absolute
bias, RMSE, reduction of RMSE) suggests that the
EDCDFm method is superior to the CDFm method. Thus,
the EDCDFm developed in this study seems more skillful in
dealing with changed variability. This may have profound
implications for climate impact studies that are concerned
with changing climate variability.
[25] To investigate the sensitivity of bias correction results
to the choice of different baseline periods, we performed the
same bootstrapping experiments using the period of 1901–
D10101 LI ET AL.: BIAS CORRECTION OF IPCC MODEL OUTPUTS D10101

Figure 10. Mean and variability of the original model temperature projection (2070–2099) and after bias
correction using the EDCDFm and CDFm methods. (top) January and (bottom) July.

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D10101 LI ET AL.: BIAS CORRECTION OF IPCC MODEL OUTPUTS D10101

Figure 11. Differences for selected percentiles for bias‐corrected temperature projections using
EDCDFm and CDFm. (top) January and (bottom) July.

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D10101 LI ET AL.: BIAS CORRECTION OF IPCC MODEL OUTPUTS D10101

Figure 12. Same as Figure 10 but for precipitation.

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D10101 LI ET AL.: BIAS CORRECTION OF IPCC MODEL OUTPUTS
1930 as the training period. We found that the choice of
baseline period does have an impact on the bias correction
results: the bias‐corrected results are tightly connected to the
model biases for the training period. The results indicate that
care should be taken when using a specified time period for
training.
[26] In bias correcting future scenario projections, the
differences between the two methods are subtle for the
selected quartiles. However, for regions where the model
exhibits changes in variability, the differences are more
apparent at the tails of the distributions. The EDCDFm
method is more sensitive to reduced variability in the future
projection and tends to produce a probability density func-
tion that has a much narrower range than the CDFm method.
For these regions, although the mean values are very close
for both methods, the differences can be as large as 1°C
when approaching the tails (e.g., January temperature pro-
jection for the 5th or 95th percentile). This may have pro-
found implications for the hydrology in high‐latitude regions
where, for example, temperature‐dependent snowmelt in the
spring is the predominant source of water.
[27] Although statistical downscaling approaches do not
provide a physical explanation for biases, they have a
computational advantage to dynamic downscaling and have
skill comparable to limited area climate models, at least for
present climate conditions [Hay and Clark, 2003; Wilby and
Wigley, 2000; Wood et al., 2004]. This makes statistical
downscaling very attractive to climate impact and assess-
ment applications because large ensemble members can be
generated relatively easily. On the other hand, the EDCDFm
assumes a time‐invariant bias (or transfer function) like
other statistical downscaling techniques. This assumption
may not necessarily hold. For example, if the region of
interest experiences a different rainfall regime in the future
as a result of changes in large‐scale circulation, then the
future bias would be controlled by different processes, and
the behavior of the bias may change. This is a limitation of
the downscaling method, but one that cannot be tested, as
we cannot validate future projections. Compared to other
statistical downscaling approaches, the EDCDFm has two
attractive features. First, the method explicitly considers
changes in the distribution of the future climate, including
the tails of the distribution, which are most pertinent for
climate impact and assessment studies. Second, the pro-
posed method is very straightforward and simple to use. It
is particularly useful for a large spatial domain such as the
Eurasian continent or the entire globe. In contrast, many
statistical downscaling approaches are based on regression‐
type models or weather classification schemes developed
for small regions or specific sites and therefore are inap-
propriate for large‐scale applications. Furthermore, nearly
every statistical downscaling approach is developed for a
specific purpose or location, and so there is no panacea,
although general guidelines on the choice of statistical
method have been developed [Wilby et al., 2004].
[28] The EDCDFm method can be readily applied to other
climate model outputs in producing ensemble climate pro-
jections for a variety of scenarios. We have successfully
applied the method to several other coupled climate model
projections. Combined with a temporal disaggregation
approach such as a climate analog approach [e.g., Benestad,
2001; Zorita and von Storch, 1999] or a more traditional
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random sampling method [e.g., Hirabayashi et al., 2005],
gridded time series at daily or even finer temporal scales
can be derived for, but not limited to, hydrologic impact
studies. This is the subject of an accompanying study in
which our approach is to sample the daily and subdaily
variation from the historic observations (thus maintaining
realistic temporal and spatial structure in the data) but
looking at improved methods that take into account projected
changes in the daily and subdaily statistics (e.g., storm fre-
quencies and intensities and diurnal cycles of temperature and
precipitation).
[29] Changes in the hydrological cycle, especially more
frequent extreme events, can have the most devastating
impacts on human society and result in losses exceeding
billions of dollars. Meanwhile, there is increasing evidence
of the intensification of the global hydrological cycle for the
past century [Huntington, 2006; Milly et al., 2002]. The
proposed method offers decision makers another possible
scenario of the future climate. It is especially useful for
regions experiencing changes at a relatively fast pace, such
as high latitudes. These scenario forcings will be invalu-
able in assisting, for example, water resources planners to
assess future flood risk, update reservoir operation rules,
and initiate talks for sharing cross‐border water resources,
especially for water‐scarce regions.
[30] Acknowledgments. The study is supported by NSF grant ARC‐
0629471 and NASA grant NNG06GE62G. Their support is gratefully
acknowledged. We acknowledge the modeling groups, the Program
for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) and the
WCRP’s Working Group on Coupled Modeling (WGCM), for their roles
in making available the WCRP CMIP3 multimodel data set. Support of this
data set is provided by the Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy.
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