Extreme Precipitation on Consecutive Days Occurs More Often in a Warming Climate

Haibo Du*, Markus G. Donat, Shengwei Zong, Lisa V. Alexander, Rodrigo Manzanas, Andries Kruger, Gwangyong Choi, Jim Salinger, Hong S. He, Mai He Li, Fumiaki Fujibe, Banzragch Nandintsetseg, Shafiqur Rehman, Farhat Abbas, Matilde Rusticucci, Arvind Srivastava, Panmao Zhai, Tanya Lippmann, Ibouraïma Yabi, Michael C. StambaughShengzhong Wang, Altangerel Batbold, Priscilla Teles de Oliveira, Muhammad Adrees, Wei Hou, Claudio Moises Santos e Silva, Paulo Sergio Lucio, Zhengfang Wu

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Extreme precipitation occurring on consecutive days may substantially increase the risk of related impacts, but changes in such events have not been studied at a global scale. Here we use a unique global dataset based on in situ observations and multimodel historical and future simulations to analyze the changes in the frequency of extreme precipitation on consecutive days (EPCD). We further disentangle the relative contributions of variations in precipitation intensity and temporal correlation of extreme precipitation to understand the processes that drive the changes in EPCD. Observations and climate model simulations show that the frequency of EPCD is increasing in most land regions, in particular, in North America, Europe, and the Northern Hemisphere high latitudes. These increases are primarily a consequence of increasing precipitation intensity, but changes in the temporal correlation of extreme precipitation regionally amplify or reduce the effects of intensity changes. Changes are larger in simulations with a stronger warming signal, suggesting that further increases in EPCD are expected for the future under continued climate warming.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)E1130-E1145
Number of pages16
JournalBulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Volume103
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Apr 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We acknowledge support from the National Key R&D Program of China (2019YFC0409101), Science and Technology Development Plan of Jilin Province (20190201291JC), the Joint Fund of National Natural Science Foundation of China (U19A2023), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2412020FZ002), and 2236 Co-Funded Brain Circulation Scheme2 (CoCirculation2) of T?B?TAK (121C054). M.G.D. acknowledges support by the Horizon 2020 EUCP project under Grant Agreement 776613 and by the Spanish Ministry for the Economy, Industry and Competitiveness Ram?n y Cajal 2017 Grant Reference RYC-2017-22964.

Funding Information:
Acknowledgments. We acknowledge support from the National Key R&D Program of China (2019YFC0409101), Science and Technology Development Plan of Jilin Province (20190201291JC), the Joint Fund of National Natural Science Foundation of China (U19A2023), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2412020FZ002), and 2236 Co-Funded Brain Circulation Scheme2 (CoCirculation2) of TÜBİTAK (121C054). M.G.D. acknowledges support by the Horizon 2020 EUCP project under Grant Agreement 776613 and by the Spanish Ministry for the Economy, Industry and Competitiveness Ramón y Cajal 2017 Grant Reference RYC-2017-22964.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Meteorological Society

Funding

We acknowledge support from the National Key R&D Program of China (2019YFC0409101), Science and Technology Development Plan of Jilin Province (20190201291JC), the Joint Fund of National Natural Science Foundation of China (U19A2023), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2412020FZ002), and 2236 Co-Funded Brain Circulation Scheme2 (CoCirculation2) of T?B?TAK (121C054). M.G.D. acknowledges support by the Horizon 2020 EUCP project under Grant Agreement 776613 and by the Spanish Ministry for the Economy, Industry and Competitiveness Ram?n y Cajal 2017 Grant Reference RYC-2017-22964. Acknowledgments. We acknowledge support from the National Key R&D Program of China (2019YFC0409101), Science and Technology Development Plan of Jilin Province (20190201291JC), the Joint Fund of National Natural Science Foundation of China (U19A2023), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2412020FZ002), and 2236 Co-Funded Brain Circulation Scheme2 (CoCirculation2) of TÜBİTAK (121C054). M.G.D. acknowledges support by the Horizon 2020 EUCP project under Grant Agreement 776613 and by the Spanish Ministry for the Economy, Industry and Competitiveness Ramón y Cajal 2017 Grant Reference RYC-2017-22964.

FundersFunder number
Horizon 2020 EUCP
Science and Technology Development Plan of Jilin Province20190201291JC
Spanish Ministry for the Economy, Industry and Competitiveness Ram?n y Cajal
Spanish Ministry for the Economy, Industry and Competitiveness Ramón y CajalRYC-2017-22964
TÜBİTAK
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme776613
National Natural Science Foundation of ChinaU19A2023
National Key Research and Development Program of China2019YFC0409101
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities121C054, 2412020FZ002

    Keywords

    • Climate change
    • Climate prediction
    • Climate records
    • Extreme events
    • Precipitation

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