Could we Have Predicted 20th Century Changes in Extreme Precipitation?
Abstract
While objective probabilistic projections of temperature changes for the coming century are now routinely produced, those for precipitation are unreasonably broad because the historical record provides an insufficient constraint on the response to greenhouse gas forcing. Here we examine whether the Clausius- Clapeyron (CC) relationship can act as a transfer function between projections of temperature change and changes in the intensity of daily extreme precipitation events, in posing the question,"how good a prediction of 20th century changes in extreme precipitation could we have made?". Our hypothetical climates are captured by a large ensemble time slice experiment using a high resolution model of the atmosphere, and we focus on a region covering the North Atlantic and Europe. Within the uncertainties present we conclude that probabilistic estimates of future temperature changes also appear to be applicable to changes in daily precipitation extremes in regions experiencing negligible dynamical changes.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2008
- Bibcode:
- 2008AGUFMGC43A0712R
- Keywords:
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- 1626 Global climate models (3337;
- 4928);
- 1637 Regional climate change;
- 1817 Extreme events