Observed relationships between extreme sub‐daily precipitation, surface temperature, and relative humidity
Open accessAbstract
Expected changes to future extreme precipitation remain a key uncertainty associated with anthropogenic climate change. Recently, extreme precipitation has been proposed to scale with the precipitable water content in the atmosphere, which assuming relative humidity stays constant, will increase at a rate of ∼6.8%/°C as indicated by the Clausius‐Clapeyron (C‐C) relationship. We examine this scaling empirically using data from 137 long‐record pluviograph and temperature gauges across Australia. We find that scaling rates are consistent with the C‐C relationship for surface temperatures up to between 20°C and 26°C and for precipitation durations up to 30 minutes, implying that such scaling applies only for individual storm systems. At greater temperatures negative scaling is observed. Consideration of relative humidity data shows a pronounced decrease in the maximum relative humidity for land surface temperatures greater than 26°C, indicating that moisture availability becomes the dominant driver of how extreme precipitation scales at higher temperatures.
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Similar behavior to the Netherlands record was found in some but not all subsequent studies in different regions.
“Similar behavior was found in some but not all subsequent studies in different regions [10, 31, 48, 54, 87]; see [92] for an in-depth discussion.”
From Precipitation Extremes Under Climate Change (2015) · cites this paper as [31]
Factors such as relative humidity, large-scale dynamics and temperature gradients, and transitions from stratiform to convective precipitation are thought to be important for the scaling of precipitation extremes with temperature in the current climate.
“Factors such as relative humidity [31, 48], large-scale dynamics and temperature gradients [54], and transitions from stratiform to convective precipitation [10, 29] are thought to be important for the scaling of precipitation extremes with temperature in the current climate”
From Precipitation Extremes Under Climate Change (2015) · cites this paper as [31]
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Cites
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BackgroundResultStrong increase in convective precipitation in response to higher temperatures
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- Authors
- Hardwick Jones, R., Westra, S., & Sharma, A.
- Affiliations
- School of Civil and Environmental Engineering University of New South Wales Sydney, New South Wales Australia
- UNSW Sydney (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Westra, Seth
- Venue
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Publisher
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Published
- 2010-11
- Volume
- 37
- Issue
- 22
- ISSN
- 0094-8276 (ISSN-L)
- 1944-8007
- OpenAlex
- W1586754677
- Cited by
- 431
- References
- 17
- Citations by year
- 2026: 19 · 2025: 36 · 2024: 29 · 2023: 35 · 2022: 47 · 2021: 40 · 2020: 33 · 2019: 34 · 2018: 35 · 2017: 31 · 2016: 22 · 2015: 24 · 2014: 11 · 2013: 12 · 2012: 12
- FWCI
- 10.05
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Geophysical Research Letters (publishedVersion)
- Adelaide Research & Scholarship (AR&S) (University of Adelaide) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- University of New South Wales
- 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 › Climate Change and Environmental Impact
- Keywords
- heavy rainfall, sub-daily precipitation, Clausius-Clapeyron scaling, precipitable water vapor, relative humidity, surface temperature, precipitation duration, moisture availability, climate change, Australia
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