Abstract—As a great physiographic divide, the Himalayas affecting a large system of water and air circulation which helps to determine the climatic condition in the Indian subcontinent to the south and mid-Asian highlands to the north. It creates obstacles by defending chill continental air from north side into India in winter and also defends rain-bearing southwesterly monsoon to give up maximum precipitation in that area in monsoon season. Nowadays extreme weather conditions such as heavy precipitation, cloudburst, flash flood, landslide and extreme avalanches are the regular happening incidents in the region of North Western Himalayan (NWH). The present study has been planned to investigate the suitable model(s) to find out the rainfall pattern over that region. For this investigation, selected models from Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) and Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) has been utilized in a consistent framework for the period of 1976 to 2000 (historical). The ability of these driving models from CORDEX domain and CMIP5 has been examined according to their capability of the spatial distribution as well as time series plot of rainfall over NWH in the rainy season and compared with the ground-based Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) gridded rainfall data set. It is noted from the analysis that the models like MIROC5 and MPI-ESM- LR from the both CORDEX and CMIP5 provide the best spatial distribution of rainfall over NWH region. But the driving models from CORDEX underestimates the daily rainfall amount as compared to CMIP5 driving models as it is unable to capture daily rainfall data properly when it has been plotted for time series (TS) individually for the state of Uttarakhand (UK) and Himachal Pradesh (HP). So finally it can be said that the driving models from CMIP5 are better than CORDEX domain models to investigate the rainfall pattern over NWH region. Keywords—Global warming, rainfall, CMIP5, CORDEX, North Western Himalayan region. I. INTRODUCTION IMALAYAS play an important role in air circulation as well as water which has influenced the climatic condition in the Indian subcontinent. By defending rain-bearing south- westerly monsoon it helps to provide maximum precipitation over Indian region in rainy season [1].The extreme weather events like cloud burst, heavy precipitation, flash floods and landslides happen regularly in the western Himalayan region [2]. As there is a considerable variation between the variation and amount of rainfall, the NWH region becomes unpredictable to project future rainfall [3]. Now it has become Sudip K. Kundu, final year M. Tech student is with the Indian Institute of remote Sensing, Dehradun, UK-248001, India (phone: +91 9883233977, +91 7017151798; e-mail: sudipkrkundugeoh@gmail.com). Charu Singh is associated as a scientist with the Indian Institute of remote Sensing, ISRO, Dehradun, UK-248001, India (phone: +91 135 2524183; e- mail: charu@iirs.gov.in). a topic of scientific debate, the dynamically downscaled CORDEX-SA domain models are able to capture rainfall pattern over NWH region properly compared to the CMIP5 models or not [4]. In that context the present study has been planned to investigate the better performed model(s) which can be further used to predict future rainfall pattern over NWH region. II. STUDY AREA The study area is North-West Himalayan region (Fig. 1). It encompasses three states namely Jammu & Kashmir, HP and UK. The geographical extension of this region is varies in between 28° N to 37° N latitudes and 72° E to 82° E longitudes. Fig. 1 Study area map of NWH region III. DATASETS AND METHODOLOGY The following datasets have been utilized-  CMIP5 models: CMIP5 is a framework and the analogue of the atmospheric model intercomparison project (AMIP) for global coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation model (GCM). The following models from CMIP5 have been used to do this analysis. TABLE I DETAILS OF 2 MODELS PARTICIPATED IN THE CMIP5 PROJECT Models Contributing Institute Resolution (Lon×Lat) MIROC5 Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute (The University of Tokyo), National Institute for Environmental Studies, and Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Japan 1.4˚×1.4˚ MPI- ESM-LR Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Germany 1.8˚×1.8˚ A Comparative Study of Regional Climate Models and Global Coupled Models over Uttarakhand Sudip Kumar Kundu, Charu Singh H World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Marine and Environmental Sciences Vol:13, No:4, 2019 185 International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 13(4) 2019 ISNI:0000000091950263 Open Science Index, Marine and Environmental Sciences Vol:13, No:4, 2019 publications.waset.org/10010196/pdf