Abstract
The intensity of the heaviest extreme precipitation events is known to increase with global warming. How often such events occur in a warmer world is however less well established, and the combined effect of changes in frequency and intensity on the total amount of rain falling as extreme precipitation is much less explored, in spite of potentially large societal impacts. Here, we employ observations and climate model simulations to document strong increases in the frequencies of extreme precipitation events occurring on decadal timescales. Based on observations we find that the total precipitation from these intense events almost doubles per degree of warming, mainly due to changes in frequency, while the intensity changes are relatively weak, in accordance to previous studies. This shift towards stronger total precipitation from extreme events is seen in observations and climate models, and increases with the strength – and hence the rareness – of the event. Based on these results, we project that if historical trends continue, the most intense precipitation events observed today are likely to almost double in occurrence for each degree of further global warming. Changes to extreme precipitation of this magnitude are dramatically stronger than the more widely communicated changes to global mean precipitation.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 16063 |
| Journal | Scientific Reports |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2019 |
Funding
Additional information. No competing non-financial interests, but one of the research projects funding this work has received a small part (less than 3% of the total budget) of the funding from an insurance company, If. The E-OBS dataset from the EU-FP6 project ENSEMBLES (http://ensembles-eu.metoffice.com) and the data provided through the ECA&D project (http://www.ecad.eu) are publicly available. CPC US Unified Precipitation data is available by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their Web site at https://www. esrl.noaa.gov/psd/ and are freely available. The DIAS APHRODITE dataset is archived and freely provided under the framework of the Data Integration and Analysis System (DIAS) funded by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). The Australian Daily Rainfall Gridded Data data is available through the Bureau of Meteorology. The CMIP5 data that support the findings of this study are openly available in the ESGF portal at http://esgf-node.llnl.gov/. The work has received support from the project SUPER (no. 250573), HYPRE (243942) and TWEX (255037) funded through the Research Council of Norway. The project SUPER has also received support from the insurance company If. We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP. No competing non-financial interests, but one of the research projects funding this work has received a small part (less than 3% of the total budget) of the funding from an insurance company, If.
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 105206 Meteorology
