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Increased rainfall volume from future convective storms in the US

Nature Climate Change volume 7, pages 880–884 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Mesoscale convective system (MCS)-organized convective storms with a size of ~100 km have increased in frequency and intensity in the USA over the past 35 years1, causing fatalities and economic losses2. However, their poor representation in traditional climate models hampers the understanding of their change in the future3. Here, a North American-scale convection-permitting model which is able to realistically simulate MSCs4 is used to investigate their change by the end-of-century under RCP8.5 (ref. 5). A storm-tracking algorithm6 indicates that intense summertime MCS frequency will more than triple in North America. Furthermore, the combined effect of a 15–40% increase in maximum precipitation rates and a significant spreading of regions impacted by heavy precipitation results in up to 80% increases in the total MCS precipitation volume, focussed in a 40 km radius around the storm centre. These typically neglected increases substantially raise future flood risk. Current investments in long-lived infrastructures, such as flood protection and water management systems, need to take these changes into account to improve climate-adaptation practices.

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Fig. 1: Schematic of Lagrangian tracking of MCS precipitation and future changes in MCSs.
Fig. 2: Relative frequency changes of MCSs according to their characteristics.
Fig. 3: Precipitation in the 40 MCSs with highest P max in the mid-Atlantic region.
Fig. 4: Current and future MCSs environments.

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Acknowledgements

NCAR is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and this work was partially supported by the NSF EASM Grant AGS-1048829, by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Climate Preparedness and Resilience Program and NCAR’s Water System program. We thank the ECMWF and National Climate Data Centre for making available their datasets. Computer resources were provided by the Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (NCAR Community Computing, http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7wd3xhc).

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  1. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, CO, USA

    Andreas F. Prein, Changhai Liu, Kyoko Ikeda, Stanley B. Trier, Roy M. Rasmussen, Greg J. Holland & Martyn P. Clark

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Contributions

A.F.P designed the study, and collected and analysed the data. C.L. and K.I. performed and post-processed the climate simulations. All the authors contributed to the writing process and gave conceptual advice.

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Correspondence to Andreas F. Prein.

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Prein, A.F., Liu, C., Ikeda, K. et al. Increased rainfall volume from future convective storms in the US. Nature Clim Change 7, 880–884 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-017-0007-7

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