Abstract
Global mean precipitation changes due to climate change were previously shown to be relatively small and well constrained by the energy budget. However, local precipitation changes can be much more significant. In this paper we propose that for large enough scales, for which the water budget is closed (precipitation [P] roughly equals evaporation [E]), changes in P approach the small global mean value. However, for smaller scales, for which P and E are not necessarily equal and convergence of water vapor still plays a role, changes in P could be much larger due to dynamical contributions. Using 40 years of two reanalysis data sets, 39 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) models and additional numerical simulations, we identify the scale of transition in the importance of the different terms in the water budget to precipitation to be ~3,500–4,000 km and demonstrate its relation to the spatial scale of precipitation changes under climate change.
| Original language | American English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 10504-10511 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Geophysical Research Letters |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue number | 17-18 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1 Sep 2019 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) project constRaining the EffeCts of Aerosols on Precipitation (RECAP) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program with grant agreement 724602. P. S. also acknowledges support by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. D. W. P. and P. S. additionally acknowledge funding from Natural Environment Research Council projects NE/L01355X/1 (CLARIFY) and NE/P013406/1 (A-CURE). The simulations were performed using the ARCHER UK National Supercomputing Service. NCEP Reanalysis data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their Web site at https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/. ECMWF is acknowledged for providing ERA-Interim data set (https://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/). We acknowledge the WCRP's Working Group on Coupled Modeling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups (listed in Table S1) for producing and making available their model output: https://cmip.llnl.gov/cmip5/data_portal.html. We thank Rei Chemke for very fruitful discussions during the preparation of this paper.
Funding Information:
This research was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) project constRaining the EffeCts of Aerosols on Precipitation (RECAP) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program with grant agreement 724602. P. S. also acknowledges support by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. D. W. P. and P. S. additionally acknowledge funding from Natural Environment Research Council projects NE/L01355X/1 (CLARIFY) and NE/P013406/1 (A‐CURE). The simulations were performed using the ARCHER UK National Supercomputing Service. NCEP Reanalysis data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their Web site at https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/ . ECMWF is acknowledged for providing ERA‐Interim data set ( https://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/ ). We acknowledge the WCRP's Working Group on Coupled Modeling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups (listed in Table S1 ) for producing and making available their model output: https://cmip.llnl.gov/cmip5/data_portal.html . We thank Rei Chemke for very fruitful discussions during the preparation of this paper.
Publisher Copyright:
©2019. The Authors.
Keywords
- climate change
- evaporation
- precipitation
- spatial scales
