What is it about?
These two types of rainfall extremes analyzed correspond to events of two sizes: convective scales, or cloud scales (a few kms) and mesoscales (a few hundreds of kms). We characterize them simultaneously by using a superparameterized climate model: a climate model with a cloud-resolving model embedded within each grid cell. We show that these extremes differ in location, dynamic behavior and internal distribution of rain intensity. We find that their increase in intensity with climate change is consistent with basic thermodynamic theory and with previous analyses performed on both scales separately.
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Why is it important?
This work introduces a framework to reassess the thermodynamic and dynamic contributions to increasing rainfall extremes previously derived in a wide range of modeling setups. The superparameterized model used, the new definition introduced for convective-scale precipitation intensity and the generalized decomposition of rainfall increases into its thermodynamic and dynamic components allows for unified understanding of the dynamics of precipitation extremes and their change with climate.
Perspectives
This superparameterized climate model is a powerful tool to gain understanding of how convective precipitation interacts with the large-scale climate. Although more computationally expensive, performing carefully-designed numerical experiments is useful way to gain more insight on climate dynamics and quantify uncertainties related to changes in the hydrologic cycle as diagnosed with standard climate models.
Benjamin Fildier
University of California Berkeley Earth Sciences and Map Library
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Simultaneous characterization of mesoscale and convective-scale tropical rainfall extremes and their dynamical and thermodynamic modes of change, Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, September 2017, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/2017ms001033.
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