Global warming precipitation accumulation increases above the current-climate cutoff scale
Abstract
Large accumulations of rainfall over a precipitation event can impact human infrastructure. Unlike precipitation intensity distributions, probability distributions for accumulations at first drop slowly with increasing size. At a certain size—the cutoff scale—the behavior regime changes, and the probabilities drop rapidly. In current climate, every region is protected from excessively large accumulations by this cutoff scale, and human activities are adapted to this. An analysis of how accumulations will change under global warming gives a natural physical interpretation for the atmospheric processes producing this cutoff, but, more importantly, yields a prediction that this cutoff scale will extend in a warmer climate, leading to vastly disproportionate increases in the probabilities of the very largest events.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Jan 23, 2017
- Source ID
- 10.1073/pnas.1615333114
Entities
People
- Diana N. Bernstein
- J. David Neelin
- Samuel N. Stechmann
- Sandeep Sahany
Organizations
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
- National Science Foundation
- Office of Naval Research Global
- United States Department of Energy
- University of California
- University of Wisconsin–Madison