Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Papalexiou, Simon Michael
• Montanari, Alberto

Titel

Global and Regional Increase of Precipitation Extremes Under Global Warming

Ist Teil von

• Water resources research, 2019-06, Vol.55 (6), p.4901-4914

Ort / Verlag

Washington: John Wiley & Sons, Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2019

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Wiley Online Library Journals Frontfile Complete

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Global warming is expected to change the regime of extreme precipitation. Physical laws translate increasing atmospheric heat into increasing atmospheric water content that drives precipitation changes. Within the literature, general agreement is that extreme precipitation is changing, yet different assessment methods, data sets, and study periods may result in different patterns and rates of change. Here we perform a global analysis of 8,730 daily precipitation records focusing on the 1964–2013 period when the global warming accelerates. We introduce a novel analysis of the N largest extremes in records having N complete years within the study period. Based on these extremes, which represent more accurately heavy precipitation than annual maxima, we form time series of their annual frequency and mean annual magnitude. The analysis offers new insights and reveals (1) global and zonal increasing trends in the frequency of extremes that are highly unlikely under the assumption of stationarity and (2) magnitude changes that are not as evident. Frequency changes reveal a coherent spatial pattern with increasing trends being detected in large parts of Eurasia, North Australia, and the Midwestern United States. Globally, over the last decade of the studied period we find 7% more extreme events than the expected number. Finally, we report that changes in magnitude are not in general correlated with changes in frequency. Key Points Global analysis on the 50 largest precipitation extremes over the intensified global warming period (1964–2013) Novel method to investigate changes in extremes' frequency shows global and regional changes Increasing trends in extremes' frequency are unlikely under the assumption of stationarity