Climate change is causing more frequent and intense precipitation extremes; however, these changes are difficult to project. This paper shows that observations of the increased frequency of extreme precipitation events over the past four decades can be used to reduce uncertainty in future climate model projections by 20–40%.
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References
IPCC Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis (eds Masson-Delmotte, V. P. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2021). The latest IPCC report documents various ways in which precipitation is changing and how it will change in the future.
Fischer, E. M. & Knutti, R. Observed heavy precipitation increase confirms theory and early models. Nat. Clim. Change 6, 986–991 (2016). An article showing that detectable changes in heavy precipitation have begun to emerge in observational datasets.
Kotz, M., Levermann, A. & Wenz, L. The effect of rainfall changes on economic production. Nature 601, 223–227 (2022). An article that measures the economic impact of changing precipitation characteristics.
Williamson, M. S. et al. Emergent constraints on climate sensitivities. Rev. Mod. Phys. 93, 025004 (2021). A review article that discusses the emergent constraint approach and its applications across climate science.
Sun, Q. et al. A review of global precipitation data sets: data sources, estimation, and intercomparisons. Rev. Geophys. 56, 79–107 (2018). A review article that documents the variety of methods for observing global precipitation and their associated uncertainties.
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This is a summary of: Thackeray, C. W. et al. Constraining the increased frequency of global precipitation extremes under warming. Nat. Clim. Change https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01329-1 (2022).
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Reducing uncertainty in simulated increases in heavy rainfall occurrence. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 424–425 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01338-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01338-0
