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Increased melting level height impacts surface precipitation phase and intensity

Nature Climate Change volume 10, pages 771–776 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

The global near-surface temperature increased by ~0.155 K per decade during 1979–2012, which resulted in decreasing snow and increasing rain events, retreating mountain glaciers and more frequent and intense rainfall extremes. Although surface temperature increases are well studied, less attention is given to the associated changes in the tropospheric thermal structure, such as melting level height, which affects cloud microphysics and surface precipitation. Here we use observations and reanalyses to show that the melting level height increased by 32 ± 14 m per decade over global land areas during 1979–2010, consistent with a warming atmosphere. This causes a transition from snow to rain, the enhanced melting of hail and an increased depth of warm cloud layers (cloud base to melting level distance). Warm cloud layers with a depth beyond ~3.5 km result in an intensification of extreme precipitation at twice the rate of the atmospheric moisture increases. Days with such environments increased by 25% per decade in populated regions, such as the eastern United States.

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Fig. 1: Annual average ML height changes (ΔML) since 1900.
Fig. 2: WCL depths increased over the period 1979–2010 on days with more than 1 mm of precipitation, which enhanced the risk for extreme rainfall.
Fig. 3: Increases in ML height (above the surface) reduce the risk of damaging hail in tropical and subtropical regions due to enhanced melting.
Fig. 4: Increasing ML heights results in decreases in the surface snowfall, increases in heavy rainfall, an enhanced melting of hail and an accelerated surface runoff.

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Data availability

The ERA-Interim and ERA-20C data used in this study are available from ECMWF’s MARS archive (https://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/). The Wyoming radiosonde dataset can be downloaded from http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/sounding.html. The Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive radiosonde data can be obtained from https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/weather-balloon/integrated-global-radiosonde-archive. Global Historical Climatology Network data can be downloaded from https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/by_year/. Maximum hail diameter reports are accessible from https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/stormevents/ for the United States and from http://www.bom.gov.au/australia/stormarchive/ for Australia.

Code availability

The code for the statistical analysis and visualization of data in this document can be accessed under https://github.com/AndreasPrein/Increasing-Melting-Level-Height.git (ref. 68).

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Acknowledgements

NCAR is funded by the National Science Foundation. We thank the ECMWF, NOAA, NCDC and H. Beck for making available their datasets and K. E. Trenberth for his constructive comments. Computer resources were provided by the Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (NCAR Community Computing; http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7wd3xhc).

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    Andreas F. Prein & Andrew J. Heymsfield

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Contributions

A.F.P. designed the study, and collected and analysed the data. A.J.H. provided conceptual advice and contributed to the writing.

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Correspondence to Andreas F. Prein.

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Peer review information Nature Climate Change thanks Kathleen Schiro and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Mean linear trend estimates of daily average melting level (ML) height from 1979 to 2010.

Contours show annual average a, and seasonal (b–e) mean trends from ERA-Interim and ERA-20C and colored circles show trends from RS data. Hatching from top left to bottom right (bottom left to top right) shows areas where ERA-Interim (ERA-20C) has significant trends based on a two-sided Wald Test with t-distribution (α=0.05). Significant trends in RS data are shown with a back outlined circle. Average global, global land, and global ocean time series are shown in f–h. Thin lines show annual means and thick lines show ten-year moving averages.

Extended Data Fig. 2

Similar as Electronic Data Fig. 1 but for changes in the surface to melting level lapse rate (LR).

Extended Data Fig. 3 Annual (a) and seasonal (b-e) linear trend estimates for snow-day to precipitation-day ratio (precipitation [liquid and solid] ≥ 1 mm d−1) between 1979-2010.

Filled contours show average trends from ERA-20C and ERA-Interim and filled circles show trends at radiosonde sounding stations. Right/left tilted hatched areas indicate that ERA-20c/ERA-Interim has statistically significant trends based on a two-sided Wald Test with t-distribution (α=0.05). Tick outlined circles show locations with significant radiosonde sounding trends. Panels (f–j) are similar to (a–e) but show observations from Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) stations. Tick outlined circles show locations with significant trends. The inlays show trend probability density functions including the ratio of negative and positive trends (numbers above inlay). Percent changes in the annual snow-day to precipitation-day ratio from ERA-20C (blue line), ERA-Interim (red line), radiosonde soundings (black line), and GHCN stations (green line; North America only) are shown for North America (k), Europe (l), and Asia (m) relative to the period 1979-2010. ERA-20C surface temperature (T2M) changes are shown in gray on the secondary y-axis. Thick lines show 10-year moving average values of annual data (thin lines).

Extended Data Fig. 4 Annual average linear trend estimates for cloud base height (a–c), melting level height (d–f), and warm cloud layer depth (g–i) from 1979 to 2010.

Results are shown based on data from ERA-Interim (top row), ERA-20C (middle row), and radiosonde soundings (bottom row). Statistically significant trends are highlighted with hatching (ERA-Interim and ERA-20C) and with black outlined circles (radiosonde soundings) based on a two-sided Wald Test with t-distribution (α=0.05). Gray areas correspond to regions where breakpoints were detected.

Extended Data Fig. 5

Similar as Electronic Data Fig. 1 but for daily average warm cloud layer depth on precipitation days (days with > 1 mm d−1 precipitation).

Extended Data Fig. 6 Scaling of extreme precipitation with warm cloud layer (WCL) depth (a), convective available potential energy (CAPE, c), and the size of the rainfall producing precipitation object (d) on wet days (precipitation larger 1 mm).

Results are based on daily averaged radiosonde soundings within the period 1979-2016. The symbol colors show the associated cloud base mixing ratio. Precipitation is conditioned by binning WCL depth/CAPE/precipitation size in bins of 124 m/kJ kg−1/1,000 km2 distance with 500 m/kJ kg−1/1,000 km2 overlap centred on each bin. (b) Frequency of daily precipitation accumulations larger than 100 mm under warm cloud layer depth (WCLD) conditions of greater 3.5 km.

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Prein, A.F., Heymsfield, A.J. Increased melting level height impacts surface precipitation phase and intensity. Nat. Clim. Chang. 10, 771–776 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0825-x

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