American monsoon hydroclimate extremes in the Southwest U.S. influenced by dynamically downscaled CMIP5 ensembles
Abstract
Warm season rainfall in the Southwest U.S. is often closely associated with North American monsoon (NAM) activity. Most monsoon-related severe weather is often associated with organized convection, including microbursts, lightning and flash flood. Capturing NAM precipitation at suitable modeling configurations to represent fine-scale complex terrain and includes large-scale atmospheric forcing is a constant challenge for the Southwest. In this study, we present the NAM climate and extreme weather analysis using dynamically downscaled CMIP5 products from the North American Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (NA CORDEX). Dynamically downscaled Weather, Research and Forecasting model (WRF) products are used as climate baseline and forcing for convection-permitting extreme event simulations. Historic long-term regional climate analyses for the past sixty years have indicated reduced mean precipitation for the Southwest, but convection events have become less frequent but more intensified. Maintaining individual model variability from driving GCMs, NAM future climatology and extreme weather projections could still follow the large scale variability and the trend of intensifying extremes enhanced by anthropogenic climate change.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.H13K1544C
- Keywords:
-
- 3337 Global climate models;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 3354 Precipitation;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 1816 Estimation and forecasting;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1840 Hydrometeorology;
- HYDROLOGY