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1. Cyclone Jasper’s rains in the context of climate change

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2400292121  

   Emanuel, Kerry (April 2024, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   Cyclone Jasper struck northern Queensland in mid-December, 2023, causing extensive flooding stemming from torrential rain. Many stations reported rainfall totals exceeding 1 m, and a few surpassed 2 m, possibly making Jasper the wettest tropical cyclone in Australian history. To be better prepared for events like Jasper, it is useful to estimate the probability of rainfall events of Jasper’s magnitude and how that probability is likely to evolve as climate warms. To make such estimates, we apply an advanced tropical cyclone downscaling technique to nine global climate models, generating a total of 27,000 synthetic tropical cyclones each for the climate of the recent past and that of the end of this century. We estimate that the annual probability of 1 m of rain from tropical cyclones at Cairns increases from about 0.8% at the end of the 20th century to about 2.3% at the end of the 21st, a factor of almost three. Interpolating frequency to the year 2023 suggests that the current annual probability of Jasper’s rainfall is about 1.2%, about a 50% increase over that of the year 2000. Further analysis suggests that the primary causes of increasing rainfall are stronger cyclones and a moister atmosphere. 

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2. When it rains, lava pours

   Manga, M (January 2020, 07 Nature)
3. Influence of Indian Ocean SST regionality on the East African short rains

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-020-05265-8  

   Liu, Weiran; Cook, Kerry H.; Vizy, Edward K. (June 2020, Climate Dynamics)
4. Meteorological causes of the catastrophic rains of October/November 2019 in equatorial Africa

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2021.103687  

   Nicholson, Sharon E.; Fink, Andreas H.; Funk, Chris; Klotter, Douglas A.; Satheesh, Athul Rasheeda (January 2022, Global and Planetary Change)
5. Rains and Showers in OTREC; Weak Temperature Gradient Modeling

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2023MS003980  

   Raymond, D J; Stone, Ž; Sentić, S (March 2024, Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems)

   Abstract Rainfall in the tropics has been shown to be produced either by isolated but intense convective systems (showersregime) or widespread but weaker systems (rainsregime). We examine significant rainfall systems observed in the OTREC project (Organization of Tropical East Pacific Convection) in order to tease out the physical mechanisms differentiating these two regimes. We find that rains occur in very moist environments, typically with weak conditional instability. In contrast, showers develop in drier environments with larger instability. Spectral weak temperature gradient numerical calculations show that showers are associated with episodic rainfall separated by significant quiescent periods, whereas rains produce continuous simulated rainfall after a spinup period. Mass flux profiles of showers and rains are very different, resulting in different effects on the large scale environment. 

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