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Abstract Purpose of Review: Review our current understanding of how precipitation is related to its thermodynamic environment, i.e., the water vapor and temperature in the surroundings, and implications for changes in extremes in a warmer climate. Recent Findings: Multiple research threads have i) sought empirical relationships that govern onset of strong convective precipitation, or that might identify how precipitation extremes scale with changes in temperature; ii) examined how such extremes change with water vapor in global and regional climate models under warming scenarios; iii) identified fundamental processes that set the characteristic shapes of precipitation distributions. Summary: While water vapor increases tend to be governed by the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship to temperature, precipitation extreme changes are more complex and can increase more rapidly, particularly in the tropics. Progress may be aided by bringing separate research threads together and by casting theory in terms of a full explanation of the precipitation probability distribution. 

Abstract Daily and subdaily precipitation extremes in historical phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) simulations are evaluated against satellite-based observational estimates. Extremes are defined as the precipitation amount exceeded every x years, ranging from 0.01 to 10, encompassing the rarest events that are detectable in the observational record without noisy results. With increasing temporal resolution there is an increased discrepancy between models and observations: for daily extremes, the multimodel median underestimates the highest percentiles by about a third, and for 3-hourly extremes by about 75% in the tropics. The novelty of the current study is that, to understand the model spread, we evaluate the 3D structure of the atmosphere when extremes occur. In midlatitudes, where extremes are simulated predominantly explicitly, the intuitive relationship exists whereby higher-resolution models produce larger extremes ( r = −0.49), via greater vertical velocity. In the tropics, the convective fraction (the fraction of precipitation simulated directly from the convective scheme) is more relevant. For models below 60% convective fraction, precipitation amount decreases with convective fraction ( r = −0.63), but above 75% convective fraction, this relationship breaks down. In the lower-convective-fraction models, there is more moisture in the lower troposphere, closer to saturation. In the higher-convective-fraction models, there is deeper convection and higher cloud tops, which appears to be more physical. Thus, the low-convective models are mostly closer to the observations of extreme precipitation in the tropics, but likely for the wrong reasons. These intermodel differences in the environment in which extremes are simulated hold clues into how parameterizations could be modified in general circulation models to produce more credible twenty-first-century projections. 

Climatic changes over the central Himalaya are critical for water resources in downstream regions where hundreds of millions of people live. Warming and drying in this region have both occurred in recent decades, but the associated meteorological factors are difficult to diagnose based on observations from unevenly distributed weather stations, reanalyses, and global climate models that poorly reproduce the orographic diurnal cycle. Here, recent trends in the summer diurnal cycle over the central Himalaya are investigated using a 36-year high-resolution dynamical downscaling. We illustrate contrasting trends over the diurnal cycle of circulation and convection over the Himalaya. In the daytime, warming of the slopes has enhanced anabatic upslope winds. At night, clearer skies have radiatively cooled the slopes, enhancing katabatic downslope winds. The enhanced upslope winds have prevented any drying over the mountains in the daytime, while the enhanced downslope winds are associated with significant nocturnal drying at high elevations. This amplification in the diurnal cycle is critical for projecting the future hydroclimate over the region’s complex terrain.

 

Projected precipitation changes in a warming climate vary considerably, spatially, and between intensities. The changes can be greater or less than the∼7% K⁻¹Clausius‐Clapeyron (CC) prediction, owing to dynamic effects. Using two global‐climate‐model large ensembles, we quantify the dynamically induced changes to precipitation extremes from the present (1996–2005) to late‐21st‐century (2071–2080) climates, as a function of recurrence interval, focusing on the subtropics. We separate non‐CC changes into a term proportional to the present‐day vertical‐velocity spatial pattern (i.e., an amplification or damping thereof by a constant factor) and a residual. The amplitude term varies with recurrence interval, approximately canceling (doubling) CC for moderate (large) extremes, increasing precipitation variability. Contrastingly, the residual is quasi‐uniform across recurrence intervals but spatially heterogeneous, weakening extremes over dry zones. This residual may be related to Hadley cell expansion, although this explanation is insufficient to explain many features, and other possible mechanisms are discussed.

 

Projected changes in the frequency of major precipitation accumulations (hundreds of millimeters), integrated over rainfall events, over land in the late twenty-first century are analyzed in the Community Earth System Model (CESM) Large Ensemble, based on the RCP8.5 scenario. Accumulation sizes are sorted by the local average recurrence interval (ARI), ranging from 0.1 to 100 years, for the current and projected late-twenty-first-century climates separately. For all ARIs, the frequency of exceedance of the given accumulation size increases in the future climate almost everywhere, especially for the largest accumulations, with the 100-yr accumulation becoming about 3 times more frequent, averaged over the global land area. The moisture budget allows the impacts of individual factors—moisture, circulation, and event duration—to be isolated. In the tropics, both moisture and circulation cause large future increases, enhancing the 100-yr accumulation by 23% and 13% (average over tropical land), and are individually responsible for making the current-climate 100-yr accumulation 2.7 times and 1.8 times more frequent, but effects of shorter durations slightly offset these effects. In the midlatitudes, large accumulations become about 5% longer in duration, but are predominantly controlled by enhanced moisture, with the 100-yr accumulation (land average) becoming 2.4 times more frequent, and 2.2 times more frequent due to moisture increases alone. In some monsoon-affected regions, the 100-yr accumulation becomes more than 5 times as frequent, where circulation changes are the most impactful factor. These projections indicate that changing duration of events is a relatively minor effect on changing accumulations, their future enhancement being dominated by enhanced intensity (the combination of moisture and circulation).

 

The moisture budget is evaluated as a function of the probability distribution of precipitation for the end of the twentieth century and projected end of the twenty-first century in the Community Earth System Model Large Ensemble. For a given precipitation percentile, a conditional moisture budget equation relates precipitation minus evaporation ( P − E) to vertical moisture transport, horizontal moisture advection, and moisture storage. At high percentiles, moisture advection and moisture storage cancel and evaporation is negligible, so that precipitation is approximately equal to vertical moisture transport, and likewise for projected changes. Therefore, projected changes to extreme precipitation are approximately equal to the sum of thermodynamic and dynamic tendencies, representing changes to the vertical profiles of moisture content and mass convergence, respectively. The thermodynamic tendency is uniform across percentiles and regions as an intensification of the hydrological cycle, but the dynamic tendency is more complex. For extreme events, per degree of warming, in the mid-to-high latitudes the dynamic tendency is small, so that precipitation approximately scales by the Clausius–Clapeyron 7% K⁻¹increase. In the subtropics, a drying tendency originating from dynamics offsets the thermodynamic wetting tendency, with the net effect on precipitation varying among regions. The effect of this dynamic drying decreases with increasing percentile. In the deep tropics, a positive dynamic tendency occurs with magnitude similar to or greater than the positive thermodynamic tendency, resulting in generally a 10%–15% K⁻¹precipitation increase, and with a >25% K⁻¹increase over the tropical east Pacific. This reinforcing dynamical tendency increases rapidly for high percentiles.

 

Precipitation changes in a warming climate have been examined with a focus on either mean precipitation or precipitation extremes, but changes in the full probability distribution of precipitation have not been well studied. This paper develops a methodology for the quantile-conditional column moisture budget of the atmosphere for the full probability distribution of precipitation. Analysis is performed on idealized aquaplanet model simulations under 3-K uniform SST warming across different horizontal resolutions. Because the covariance of specific humidity and horizontal mass convergence is much reduced when conditioned onto a given precipitation percentile range, their conditional averages yield a clear separation between the moisture (thermodynamic) and circulation (dynamic) effects of vertical moisture transport on precipitation. The thermodynamic response to idealized climate warming can be understood as a generalized “wet get wetter” mechanism, in which the heaviest precipitation of the probability distribution is enhanced most from increased gross moisture stratification, at a rate controlled by the change in lower-tropospheric moisture rather than column moisture. The dynamic effect, in contrast, can be interpreted by shifts in large-scale atmospheric circulations such as the Hadley cell circulation or midlatitude storm tracks. Furthermore, horizontal moisture advection, albeit of secondary role, is important for regional precipitation change. Although similar mechanisms are at play for changes in both mean precipitation and precipitation extremes, the thermodynamic contributions of moisture transport to increases in high percentiles of precipitation tend to be more widespread across a wide range of latitudes than increases in the mean, especially in the subtropics.