Extreme precipitation over East Asia under 1.5 °C and 2 °C global warming targets: a comparison of stabilized and overshoot projections

Abstract

Highly populated East Asia is vulnerable to extreme precipitation. Here, we use Community Earth System Model low-warming simulations to examine how extreme precipitation events may change in East Asia under the Paris Agreement global warming targets. The frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation will increase markedly over East Asia in the warmer climates. Limiting end-of-century warming to 1.5°C, in comparison with 2°C, will reduce the risks of extreme precipitation frequency and intensity in East Asia by 26%-31%, with the greatest reductions (38%-54%) in Japan. A brief overshoot of the 1.5°C target would affect Mongolia, the Korean Peninsula and Japan from the aspects of regional average. More than 25% of the increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation in these regions can be avoided during the end of the 21st century (2081-2100) if there is no temperature overshoot, according to the best estimate. Vertical moisture advection is the main contributor to changes in precipitation-minus-evaporation in East Asia in the warmer climates. The increased low-level specific humidity and cyclonic circulation changes are the dominant thermodynamic and dynamical processes that contribute to the increase of precipitation over South China and Japan. Our work suggests that limiting warming to 1.5°C without overshoot is beneficial to minimizing the impacts associated with precipitation extremes across East Asia.

Divergent Responses of Summer Precipitation in China to 1.5°C Global Warming in Transient and Stabilized Scenarios

“…Both total precipitation and extreme precipitation would increase over East Asia under RCP scenarios (Kitoh et al, 2013;Li et al, 2015;Alfieri et al, 2016). The precipitation seasonal cycle would be enhanced, and a lower warming target could robustly reduce hydrological risks compared to higher warming levels (Zhang et al, 2019). Further research shows that the risk of flooding would be increasing significantly in many areas of China, especially in western China and the Huanghuai Basin .…”

“…There are also a few recent studies reported in the literature (L. Chen et al, 2018, Z. Chen et al, 2020Lee et al, 2018;D. Li et al, 2019) to assess changes of the East Asian summer monsoon system in the stabilized 1.5°C and 2°C warmer worlds.…”

Extreme hot days over three global mega‐regions: Historical fidelity and future projection

“…The red '×' indicates the fidelity of the MME outputs from both the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios were used. The Paris Agreement set a preferable target to limit global warming to 1.5 C above preindustrial levels (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 1992), and many studies have projected extreme events in models for this 1.5 C warming level (Li et al, 2019;Zhao and Zhou, 2019). Thus, for the comparison with the historical epoch , the period of 2030-2054 was chosen as the future epoch for the following analysis, during which global warming is likely to reach the 1.5 C level (IPCC SR15, 2018;Nangombe et al, 2019).…”

Changes in extreme events over Asia for present and future climate conditions based on a modelling analysis of atmospheric circulation anomalies

“…These findings are not only pertinent to the European region but also to most of the Northern Hemisphere, including the Asian continent. However, there are relatively few published articles focussing on the understanding of large-scale circulation patterns and extreme weather events over the Asian region (Li et al 2019;Kar et al 2014).…”