High-rate Precipitation Causing Floods Modulated by Solar Wind High-speed Streams

Climate change is affecting the stability of Earths atmosphere and increasing the occurrence of extreme weather events, such as heavy rainfall causing floods and landslides, which pose natural hazards with major socio-economic and health impacts. Using gridded daily precipitation datasets in conjunction with solar wind data it is shown that precipitation occurrence is modulated by solar wind high-speed streams. Superposed epoch analysis shows a statistical increase in the occurrence of high-rate precipitation following arrivals of high-speed streams from coronal holes. These results are consistent with the observed tendency of heavy rainfall leading to floods and flash floods to follow arrivals of high-speed streams. The role of the solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere-atmosphere coupling in severe weather as mediated by globally propagating aurorally excited atmospheric gravity waves triggering convection in the troposphere that has been proposed in previous publications is further addressed.