Rarest rainfall events will see the greatest relative increase in magnitude under future climate change

Gaby J Gründemann*, Nick van de Giesen, Lukas Brunner, Ruud van der Ent

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

5 Citations (Scopus)
21 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Future rainfall extremes are projected to increase with global warming according to theory and climate models, but common (annual) and rare (decennial or centennial) extremes could be affected differently. Here, using 25 models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 driven by a range of plausible scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions, we show that the rarer the event, the more likely it is to increase in a future climate. By the end of this century, daily land rainfall extremes could increase in magnitude between 10.5% and 28.2% for annual events, and between 13.5% and 38.3% for centennial events, for low and high emission scenarios respectively. The results are consistent across models though with regional variation, but the underlying mechanisms remain to be determined.
Original languageEnglish
Article number235
Number of pages9
JournalCommunications Earth & Environment
Volume3
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

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