What is it about?
Instrumental and satellite data, as well as model simulations suggest that annual precipitation (rainfall & snowfall) varies quite normaly around its mean. On the other hand, reconstructions of past climates show that there have been extended deviations from the average regime, which could lead to clustering of the extremes. Here we present some evidence that unites these two behaviours.
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Why is it important?
If our hypothesis holds true then (a) classical statistics are inappropriate for application in rainfall and (b) decades of extreme high or low rainfall are more likely to happen in the future than our instrumental records suggested. This has major implications in long-term water resources management and through it to regional/national economical development.
Perspectives
I strongly believe that in order to prepare for future changes, we should understand as much as possible our climatic past. For example, there is increasing evidence of extensive mega-droughts in the paleoclimatic data and our work argues that they should be taken into consideration in order to estimate future precipitation variability.
Yannis Markonis
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Scale-dependence of persistence in precipitation records, Nature Climate Change, December 2015, Nature,
DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2894.
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