Heavy precipitation in a changing climate: Does short‐term summer precipitation increase faster?
Open accessAbstract
Climate models project that heavy precipitation events intensify with climate change. It is generally accepted that extreme day‐long events will increase at a rate of about 6–7% per degree warming, consistent with the Clausius‐Clapeyron relation. However, recent studies suggest that subdaily (e.g., hourly) precipitation extremes may increase at about twice this rate. Conventional climate models are not suited to assess such events, due to the limited spatial resolution and the need to parametrize convective precipitation (i.e., thunderstorms and rain showers). Here we employ a convection‐resolving model using a horizontal grid spacing of 2.2 km across an extended region covering the Alps and its larger‐scale surrounding from northern Italy to northern Germany. Consistent with previous results, projections using a Representative Concentration Pathways version 8.5 greenhouse gas scenario reveal a significant decrease of mean summer precipitation. However, unlike previous studies, we find that both extreme day‐long and hour‐long precipitation events asymptotically intensify with the Clausius‐Clapeyron relation. Differences to previous studies might be due to the model or region considered, but we also show that it is inconsistent to extrapolate from present‐day precipitation scaling into the future.
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The model bias of too-frequent precipitation will affect percentiles calculated over only wet days rather than all days, even if the extreme events are properly simulated, which suggests that calculating extremes using all days (or all hours) is preferable for comparison of precipitation extremes between models and observations.
“The model bias of too-frequent precipitation mentioned above will affect percentiles calculated over only wet days rather than all days [9], even if the extreme events are properly simulated, which suggests that calculating extremes using all days (or all hours) is preferable for comparison of precipitation extremes between models and observations.”
From Precipitation Extremes Under Climate Change (2015) · cites this paper as [9]
The sensitivity of precipitation extremes for long-term climate change need not be the same as for variability in a given climate.
“While the sensitivity of precipitation extremes for long-term climate change need not be the same as for variability in a given climate [9, 58]”
From Precipitation Extremes Under Climate Change (2015) · cites this paper as [9]
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- Authors
- Ban, N., Schmidli, J., & Schär, C.
- Affiliations
- ETH Zurich (CH)
- Corresponding author
- Ban, Nikolina
- Venue
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Publisher
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Published
- 2015-02-18
- Volume
- 42
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1165-1172
- ISSN
- 0094-8276 (ISSN-L)
- 1944-8007
- OpenAlex
- W2058420228
- Cited by
- 460
- References
- 31
- Citations by year
- 2026: 23 · 2025: 32 · 2024: 33 · 2023: 40 · 2022: 59 · 2021: 59 · 2020: 56 · 2019: 45 · 2018: 37 · 2017: 33 · 2016: 35 · 2015: 7
- FWCI
- 30.56
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Geophysical Research Letters (publishedVersion)
- Repository for Publications and Research Data (ETH Zurich) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- ETH Zürich Research Collection
- Funders
- Swiss National Science Foundation ((200021_132614))
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Atmospheric aerosols and clouds
- Keywords
- heavy rainfall, Clausius-Clapeyron equation, summer precipitation, convection-resolving models, climate change projections, convective precipitation, precipitation scaling, Alps, RCP8.5
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