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The Changing Character of Precipitation
Open accessAbstract
From a societal, weather, and climate perspective, precipitation intensity, duration, frequency, and phase are as much of concern as total amounts, as these factors determine the disposition of precipitation once it hits the ground and how much runs off. At the extremes of precipitation incidence are the events that give rise to floods and droughts, whose changes in occurrence and severity have an enormous impact on the environment and society. Hence, advancing understanding and the ability to model and predict the character of precipitation is vital but requires new approaches to examining data and models. Various mechanisms, storms and so forth, exist to bring about precipitation. Because the rate of precipitation, conditional on when it falls, greatly exceeds the rate of replenishment of moisture by surface evaporation, most precipitation comes from moisture already in the atmosphere at the time the storm begins, and transport of moisture by the storm-scale circulation into the storm is vital. Hence, the intensity of precipitation depends on available moisture, especially for heavy events. As climate warms, the amount of moisture in the atmosphere, which is governed by the Clausius–Clapeyron equation, is expected to rise much faster than the total precipitation amount, which is governed by the surface heat budget through evaporation. This implies that the main changes to be experienced are in the character of precipitation: increases in intensity must be offset by decreases in duration or frequency of events. The timing, duration, and intensity of precipitation can be systematically explored via the diurnal cycle, whose correct simulation in models remains an unsolved challenge of vital importance in global climate change. Typical problems include the premature initiation of convection, and precipitation events that are too light and too frequent. These challenges in observations, modeling, and understanding precipitation changes are being taken up in the NCAR “Water Cycle Across Scales” initiative, which will exploit the diurnal cycle as a test bed for a hierarchy of models to promote improvements in models.
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“If changes in dynamics and precipitation efficiency are negligible, precipitation extremes increase with warming because of increases in the saturation vapor pressure of water [4, 62, 85, 86]; this will be made more precise in the “Theory” section.”
From Precipitation Extremes Under Climate Change (2015) · cites this paper as [86]
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“Although cold-related deaths currently exceed heat-related deaths, heat-related deaths are expected to exceed cold-related deaths in a high-warming scenario.108,109”
From The 2024 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: facing record-breaking threats from delayed action (2024) · cites this paper as [109]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Trenberth, K. E., Dai, A., Rasmussen, R. M., & Parsons, D. B.
- Affiliations
- NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (US)
- Corresponding author
- Trenberth, Kevin E.
- Venue
- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
- Publisher
- American Meteorological Society
- Published
- 2003-09-01
- Volume
- 84
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 1205-1218
- ISSN
- 0003-0007 (ISSN-L)
- 1520-0477
- OpenAlex
- W2138644576
- Cited by
- 3,196
- References
- 81
- Citations by year
- 2026: 195 · 2025: 230 · 2024: 244 · 2023: 257 · 2022: 262 · 2021: 234 · 2020: 208 · 2019: 213 · 2018: 141 · 2017: 151 · 2016: 149 · 2015: 125 · 2014: 99 · 2013: 126 · 2012: 107
- FWCI
- 32.60
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- 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 › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Precipitation Measurement and Analysis
- Keywords
- precipitation intensity, precipitation duration, precipitation frequency, diurnal cycle, moisture transport, Clausius-Clapeyron scaling, climate change, heavy rainfall, convective initiation, climate model evaluation, droughts and floods
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