Changes in the Distribution of Rain Frequency and Intensity in Response to Global Warming*

Pendergrass, Angeline G.; Hartmann, Dennis L.

doi:10.1175/jcli-d-14-00183.1

Cited by 236 publications

(225 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Pattern scaling techniques, which assume that patterns of temperature and precipitation change can be scaled by global mean temperatures can produce quite skillful reproductions of mean climate shifts within 21st century projections (Tebaldi and Arblaster, 2014). However, climate impacts are often functions of the extremes of the distribution, which may not scale in a simple fashion with global mean temperature, especially for precipitation (Pendergrass and Hartmann, 2014). Another approach is to "time-shift", by taking periods in existing simulations where global mean temperatures equal the warming level of interest.…”

Section: Current Policy (If Enacted) Wouldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Community climate simulations to assess avoided impacts in 1.5 and 2  °C futures

et al. 2017

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Abstract. The Paris Agreement of December 2015 stated a goal to pursue efforts to keep global temperatures below 1.5 • C above preindustrial levels and well below 2 • C. The IPCC was charged with assessing climate impacts at these temperature levels, but fully coupled equilibrium climate simulations do not currently exist to inform such assessments. In this study, we produce a set of scenarios using a simple model designed to achieve long-term 1.5 and 2 • C temperatures in a stable climate. These scenarios are then used to produce century-scale ensemble simulations using the Community Earth System Model, providing impact-relevant long-term climate data for stabilization pathways at 1.5 and 2 • C levels and an overshoot 1.5 • C case, which are realized (for the 21st century) in the coupled model and are freely available to the community. Here we describe the design of the simulations and a brief overview of their impact-relevant climate response. Exceedance of historical record temperature occurs with 60 % greater frequency in the 2 • C climate than in a 1.5 • C climate aggregated globally, and with twice the frequency in equatorial and arid regions. Extreme precipitation intensity is statistically significantly higher in a 2.0 • C climate than a 1.5 • C climate in some specific regions (but not all). The model exhibits large differences in the Arctic, which is ice-free with a frequency of 1 in 3 years in the 2.0 • C scenario, and 1 in 40 years in the 1.5 • C scenario. Significance of impact differences with respect to multi-model variability is not assessed.

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Section: Current Policy (If Enacted) Wouldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Community climate simulations to assess avoided impacts in 1.5 and 2  °C futures

et al. 2017

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“…For non-Gaussian distributions (Fig. 4A), such as precipitation rate (14,15,35,36) or water vapor (27), the change in mean and variance are typically linked. In addition to affecting occurrences of extreme values (red), these mechanisms create changes throughout the probability distribution (decreases in blue; increases in light red).…”

Section: Physical Mechanisms and Implications For Robustnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Associated with this, substantial increases in frequency of high-rain-rate events can occur (13)(14)(15), and the return times of events exceeding a given threshold decrease (16).…”

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confidence: 99%

Global warming precipitation accumulation increases above the current-climate cutoff scale

Neelin

Sahany

Stechmann

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Precipitation accumulations, integrated over rainfall events, can be affected by both intensity and duration of the storm event. Thus, although precipitation intensity is widely projected to increase under global warming, a clear framework for predicting accumulation changes has been lacking, despite the importance of accumulations for societal impacts. Theory for changes in the probability density function (pdf) of precipitation accumulations is presented with an evaluation of these changes in global climate model simulations. We show that a simple set of conditions implies roughly exponential increases in the frequency of the very largest accumulations above a physical cutoff scale, increasing with event size. The pdf exhibits an approximately power-law range where probability density drops slowly with each order of magnitude size increase, up to a cutoff at large accumulations that limits the largest events experienced in current climate. The theory predicts that the cutoff scale, controlled by the interplay of moisture convergence variance and precipitation loss, tends to increase under global warming. Thus, precisely the large accumulations above the cutoff that are currently rare will exhibit increases in the warmer climate as this cutoff is extended. This indeed occurs in the full climate model, with a 3 • C end-of-century global-average warming yielding regional increases of hundreds of percent to >1,000% in the probability density of the largest accumulations that have historical precedents. The probabilities of unprecedented accumulations are also consistent with the extension of the cutoff.precipitation accumulation | global warming | extreme events | stochastic modeling | first-passage process O ccurrences of intense precipitation are projected to increase (1-8) associated with higher atmospheric moisture content (9, 10) under global warming. Measures of precipitation intensity, coarse-grained to 1-to 5-d intervals, exhibit end-of-century increases on the order of 20% for wettest annual 5-d rainfall (8) or 10% in average wet-day intensity (11) or 17%• C in the 99.9th to 99.999th percentiles of daily precipitation (12) in businessas-usual anthropogenic forcing scenarios. Associated with this, substantial increases in frequency of high-rain-rate events can occur (13-15), and the return times of events exceeding a given threshold decrease (16).Time-integrated accumulation, the amount of precipitation that falls during a single event, is of concern for many societal impacts (17). Because more intense precipitation could, in principle, yield shorter event durations (10), the expected change in accumulation probabilities is unclear. Here, we derive a stochastic prototype from a fundamental climate model equation. This leads to an explanation of key properties of the probability density function (pdf) of accumulations noted in station observations (18-20)-why the pdf of accumulation size drops slowly with increasing size over many orders of magnitude before reaching a cutoff scale, after which the pdf drops...

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“…As GCMs have become better able to resolve regional-scale boundary features (e.g., orography, coastlines), the scientific community has paid increasing attention to these models' representations of local and regional hydrological extremes (e.g., Dai, 2006;Wilcox and Donner, 2007;Rosa and Collins, 2013), including the sensitivity of those extremes to climate change (e.g., Trenberth, 2011;Kharin et al, 2013;Pendergrass and Hartmann, 2014;Westra et al, 2014). Robust projections of local and regional changes in extremes with anthropogenic warming are essential to underpin decisions on adaptation strategies; accurate predictions of these extremes in response to natural climate variability are critical for preserving lives and livelihoods, for example, through emergency response and anticipatory aid efforts, particularly on sub-seasonal-seasonal scales.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

ASoP (v1.0): a set of methods for analyzing scales of precipitation in general circulation models

2017

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Abstract. General circulation models (GCMs) have been criticized for their failure to represent the observed scales of precipitation, particularly in the tropics where simulated daily rainfall is too light, too frequent and too persistent. Previous assessments have focused on temporally or spatially averaged precipitation, such as daily means or regional averages. These evaluations offer little actionable information for model developers, because the interactions between the resolved dynamics and parameterized physics that produce precipitation occur at the native gridscale and time step.We introduce a set of diagnostics ("Analyzing Scales of Precipitation", version 1.0 -ASoP1) to compare the spatial and temporal scales of precipitation across GCMs and observations, which can be applied to data ranging from the gridscale and time step to regional and sub-monthly averages. ASoP1 measures the spectrum of precipitation intensity, temporal variability as a function of intensity and spatial and temporal coherence. When applied to time step, gridscale tropical precipitation from 10 GCMs, the diagnostics reveal that, far from the "dreary" persistent light rainfall implied by daily mean data, most models produce a broad range of time step intensities that span 1-100 mm day −1 . Models show widely varying spatial and temporal scales of time step precipitation. Several GCMs show concerning quasi-random behavior that may influence and/or alter the spectrum of atmospheric waves. Averaging precipitation to a common spatial (≈ 600 km) or temporal (3 h) resolution substantially reduces variability among models, demonstrating that averaging hides a wealth of information about intrinsic model behavior. When compared against satellite-derived analyses at these scales, all models produce features that are too large and too persistent.

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Changes in the Distribution of Rain Frequency and Intensity in Response to Global Warming*

Cited by 236 publications

References 28 publications

Community climate simulations to assess avoided impacts in 1.5 and 2  °C futures

Community climate simulations to assess avoided impacts in 1.5 and 2  °C futures

Global warming precipitation accumulation increases above the current-climate cutoff scale

ASoP (v1.0): a set of methods for analyzing scales of precipitation in general circulation models

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Changes in the Distribution of Rain Frequency and Intensity in Response to Global Warming*

Cited by 236 publications

References 28 publications

Community climate simulations to assess avoided impacts in 1.5 and 2 °C futures

Community climate simulations to assess avoided impacts in 1.5 and 2 °C futures

Global warming precipitation accumulation increases above the current-climate cutoff scale

ASoP (v1.0): a set of methods for analyzing scales of precipitation in general circulation models

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Community climate simulations to assess avoided impacts in 1.5 and 2  °C futures

Community climate simulations to assess avoided impacts in 1.5 and 2  °C futures