Response of Vertical Velocities in Extratropical Precipitation Extremes to Climate Change
Abstract
Precipitation extremes intensify in most regions in climate-model projections. Changes in vertical velocities contribute to the changes in intensity of precipitation extremes but remain poorly understood. Here, we find that mid-tropospheric vertical velocities in extratropical precipitation extremes strengthen overall in simulations of 21st-century climate change. For each extreme event, we solve the quasi-geostrophic omega equation to decompose this strengthening into different physical contributions. We first consider a dry decomposition in which latent heating is treated as an external forcing of upward motion. Much of the positive contribution to upward motion from increased latent heating is offset by negative contributions from increases in dry static stability and changes in the horizontal length scale of vertical velocities. However, taking changes in latent heating as given is a limitation when the aim is to understand changes in precipitation, since latent heating and precipitation are closely linked. Therefore, we also perform a moist decomposition of the changes in vertical velocities in which latent heating is represented through a moist static stability. In the moist decomposition, changes in moist static stability play a key role and contributions from other factors such as changes in the depth of the upward motion increase in importance. While both dry and moist decompositions are self-consistent, the moist dynamical perspective has greater potential to give…
Read the paper
Related studies
- Climate Change Impacts on Marine Ecosystems
- Assisted Gene Flow to Facilitate Local Adaptation to Climate Change
- Climate Change Effects on Plant Disease: Genomes to Ecosystems
- Biodiversity and Climate Change: Integrating Evolutionary and Ecological Responses of Species and Communities
- A systematic review of climate change education: giving children and young people a ‘voice’ and a ‘hand’ in redressing climate change
- Global Monsoon Dynamics and Climate Change
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.