Wind power is a rapidly growing alternative energy source to achieve the goal of the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to keep warming well below 2 •C by the end of the 21 st century. Widely reported reductions in global average surface wind speed since the 1980s, known as terrestrial stilling, however, have gone unexplained and have been considered a threat to global wind power production. Our new analysis of wind data from in-situ stations worldwide now shows that terrestrial stilling reversed around 2010 and global wind speeds over land have recovered most of the losses since the 1980s. Concomitant increased surface roughness from forest growth and urbanization cannot explain prior stilling. Instead we show decadal-scale variations of nearsurface wind are very / quite likely caused by the natural, internal decadal ocean/atmosphere oscillations of the Earth's climate system. The wind strengthening has increased the amount of wind energy entering turbines by 17 ±2% for 2010-2017, likely increasing U.S. wind power capacity by 2.5%. The increase in global terrestrial wind bodes well for the immediate future of wind energy production in these regions as an alternative to fossil fuel consumption. Projecting future wind speeds using ocean/atmosphere oscillations show wind turbines could be optimized for expected wind speeds, including small and large speeds, during the productive life spans of the turbines. Reports of a 8% global decline in land surface wind speed (~1980 to 2010) have raised concerns about output from future wind power 1-5. Wind power varies with the cube of wind speed (u) 6. The decline in wind speed is evident in the northern mid-latitude countries where the majority of wind turbines are installed including China, the U.S. and Europe 1. If the observed 1980-2010 decline in wind speed continued until the end of the century, global u would reduce by 21%, halving the amount of power available in the wind. Understanding the drivers of this long-term decline in wind speed is critical not merely to maximize wind energy production 9-11 but also to address other globally significant environmental problems related to stilling, including reduced aerosol dispersal, reduced evapotranspiration rates, and adverse effects on animal behavior and ecosystem functioning 1,3,4,12. The potential causes for the global terrestrial stilling are complex and remain contested (e.g.,

The objective of this study is to evaluate two satellite rainfall products Global Precipitation Measurement Integrated MultisatellitE Retrievals and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission 3B42V7 (GPM IMERG and TRMM 3B42V7) in southern Tibetan Plateau region, with special focus on the dependence of products' performance on topography and rainfall intensity. Over 500 in situ rain gauges constitute an unprecedentedly dense rain gauge network over this region and provide an exceptional resource for ground validation of satellite rainfall estimates. Our evaluation centers on the rainy season from May to October in 2014. Results indicate that (1) GPM product outperforms TRMM at all spatial scales and elevation ranges in detecting daily rainfall accumulation; (2) rainfall accumulation over the entire rainy season is negatively correlated with mean elevation for rain gauges and the two satellite rainfall products, while the performance of TRMM also significantly correlates with topographic variations; (3) in terms of the ability of rainfall detection, false alarming ratio of TRMM (21%) is larger than that of GPM (14%), while missing ratio of GPM (13%) is larger than that of TRMM (9%). GPM tends to underestimate the amount of light rain events of 0–1 mm/d, while the opposite (overestimation) is true for TRMM. GPM shows better detecting ability for light rainfall (0–5 mm/d) events but there is no detection skill for both GPM and TRMM at high‐elevation (>4500 m) regions. Our results not only highlight the superiority of GPM to TRMM in southern Tibetan Plateau region but also recommend that further improvement on the rainfall retrieval algorithm is needed by considering topographical influences for both GPM and TRMM rainfall products.

Heat waves (HWs) are projected to become more frequent and last longer over most land areas in the late 21st century, which raises serious public health concerns. Urban residents face higher health risks due to synergies between HWs and urban heat islands (UHIs) (i.e., UHIs are higher under HW conditions). However, the responses of urban and rural surface energy budgets to HWs are still largely unknown. This study analyzes observations from two flux towers in Beijing, China and reveals significant differences between the responses of urban and rural (cropland) ecosystems to HWs. It is found that UHIs increase significantly during HWs, especially during the nighttime, implying synergies between HWs and UHIs. Results indicate that the urban site receives more incoming shortwave radiation and longwave radiation due to HWs as compared to the rural site, resulting in a larger radiative energy input into the urban surface energy budget. Changes in turbulent heat fluxes also diverge strongly for the urban site and the rural site: latent heat fluxes increase more significantly at the rural site due to abundant available water, while sensible heat fluxes and possibly heat storage increase more at the urban site. These comparisons suggest that the contrasting responses of urban and rural surface energy budgets to HWs are responsible for the synergies between HWs and UHIs. As a result, urban mitigation and adaption strategies such as the use of green roofs and white roofs are needed in order to mitigate the impact of these synergies.

We examine the upper tail of flood peak distributions through analyses of annual peak observations from more than 8,000 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) stream gaging stations and through hydrometeorological analyses of the storms that produce the most extreme floods. We focus on the distribution of the upper tail ratio, which is defined as the peak discharge for the flood of record at a stream gaging station divided by the sample 10‐year flood magnitude. The 14 June 1903 Heppner storm, which produced an upper tail ratio of 200, was the product of a hailstorm that formed along the Blue Mountains in eastern Oregon, a region dominated by snowmelt flooding. A striking contrast between record flood peaks and the larger distribution of annual flood peaks in the United States is in the seasonality of flood occurrence, with record floods reflecting a much stronger contribution from warm season thunderstorm systems. Mountainous terrain and intense convective rainfall are important elements of the geography and hydrometeorology of extreme upper tail ratio flood peaks. The distribution of upper tail ratio values for USGS stream gaging stations does not depend on basin area, a result which is consistent with scaling results based on extreme value theory. Downscaling simulations with the Weather Research and Forecasting model are used to examine the storm environment of the 1903 Heppner storm, along with two other record flood peaks near the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon from the USGS miscellaneous flood record, the July 1956 Meyers Canyon flood and the July 1965 Lane Canyon flood.

The climatology of summer heavy rainfall events over the Beijing metropolitan region during 2008–2012 is investigated with the aid of an observational network of rain gauges and the Weather Research and Forecasting model. Two “hot spots” of higher frequency of summer heavy rainfall events are observed. One is located over the urban core region and the other resides in the climatological downwind region. Two comparative sets of model runs are designed to assess the effect of land surface properties with and without the presence of the city on the model simulation results. By comparing the two sets of model runs, the changes of rainfall statistics, behaviors of storm cells, and variables related to convection due to urbanization are analyzed and quantified. The intensity of heavy rainfall is increased over the urban and downwind region, corresponding to the locations of the two observed hot spots based on rain gauges. The changes of rainfall statistics suggest that the probability distribution of rainfall is shifted toward a heavier upper tail distribution. The Lagrangian properties of storm cells are examined using a newly developed Storm‐Cell Identification procedure. High‐echo storm cells tend to split approaching the city and merge in the downwind region. The level of free convection and the height of the planetary boundary layer are significantly increased over the urban region and maximum convective available potential energy is decreased. Increased sensible heat flux from the urban surfaces plays a dominant role in the modification of simulated rainfall from a climatological perspective.

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In this study, observational and numerical modeling analyses based on the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) are used to investigate the impact of urbanization on heavy rainfall over the Milwaukee–Lake Michigan region. The authors examine urban modification of rainfall for a storm system with continental-scale moisture transport, strong large-scale forcing, and extreme rainfall over a large area of the upper Midwest of the United States. WRF simulations were carried out to examine the sensitivity of the rainfall distribution in and around the urban area to different urban land surface model representations and urban land-use scenarios. Simulation results suggest that urbanization plays an important role in precipitation distribution, even in settings characterized by strong large-scale forcing. For the Milwaukee–Lake Michigan region, the thermodynamic perturbations produced by urbanization on the temperature and surface pressure fields enhance the intrusion of the lake breeze and facilitate the formation of a convergence zone, which create favorable conditions for deep convection over the city. Analyses of model and observed vertical profiles of reflectivity using contoured frequency by altitude displays (CFADs) suggest that cloud dynamics over the city do not change significantly with urbanization. Simulation results also suggest that the large-scale rainfall pattern is not sensitive to different urban representations in the model. Both urban representations, the Noah land surface model with urban land categories and the single-layer urban canopy model, adequately capture the dominant features of this storm over the urban region.