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Contrasting the responses of extreme precipitation to changes in surface air and dew point temperatures

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Abstract

The Clausius–Clapeyron (C–C) relationship is a thermodynamic relationship between saturation vapor pressure and temperature. Based on the C–C relationship, the scaling of extreme precipitation with respect to surface air temperature (i.e., extreme precipitation scaling) has been widely believed to quantify the sensitivity of these extremes to global surface warming under climate change. However, the extreme precipitation scaling rate in the observations produces counter-intuitive results, particularly in the tropics (i.e., strong negative scaling in the tropical land) possibly associated with limitations in moisture availability under the high-temperature bands. The trends in extreme precipitation based on station data are mixed with decreases in most of the tropics and subtropics and increases in most of the USA, western Europe, Australia, and a large portion of Asia. To try to reconcile these results, we examine the extreme precipitation scaling using dew point temperature and extreme precipitation and compare these results with those obtained from surface air temperature and extreme precipitation using station-based data, reanalysis data, and climate model simulations. We find that this mix of increases and decreases in the trends of extreme precipitation across the planet is more similar to the changes in surface dew point temperature rather than the actual temperature across the station-based data, reanalysis data, and the historical experiments with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Atmosphere Model, version 5 (CAM5). These findings suggest that dew point temperature is a better and more realistic metric for the responses of extreme precipitation to temperature increases. Therefore, the risk of having extreme precipitation is higher than what was obtained using surface air temperature, particularly in the tropics and subtropics (e.g., South Asia), areas of the world characterized by extremely high population density and severe poverty.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for insightful comments. This study was supported in part by the Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) Program and the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC)–Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) under Contract No. W913E5-16-C-0002, the National Science Foundation under CAREER Grant AGS-1349827, and the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research (Seed Grant Program). Wehner was supported by the Department of Energy Office of Science under contract number DE-AC02-05CH11231. This document was prepared as an account of work sponsored by the United States Government. While this document is believed to contain correct information, neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor the Regents of the University of California, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by its trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof, or the Regents of the University of California. The CAM5 simulations were performed using resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), also supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy, under Contract No. DEAC02-05CH11231.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

    Wei Zhang & Gabriele Villarini

  2. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Michael Wehner

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  1. Wei Zhang
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  2. Gabriele Villarini
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  3. Michael Wehner
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Correspondence to Wei Zhang.

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Zhang, W., Villarini, G. & Wehner, M. Contrasting the responses of extreme precipitation to changes in surface air and dew point temperatures. Climatic Change 154, 257–271 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02415-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02415-8