TY - JOUR
T1 - Precipitation Extremes and Water Vapor
T2 - Relationships in Current Climate and Implications for Climate Change
AU - Neelin, J. David
AU - Martinez-Villalobos, Cristian
AU - Stechmann, Samuel N.
AU - Ahmed, Fiaz
AU - Chen, Gang
AU - Norris, Jesse M.
AU - Kuo, Yi Hung
AU - Lenderink, Geert
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by National Science Foundation grant AGS-1936810 and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grant NA21OAR4310354 (JDN, FA, Y-HK, CM-V), by AGS-1742178 (GC), and by Proyecto Corfo Ingeniería 2030 código 14ENI2-26865 (CM-V).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2022/3
Y1 - 2022/3
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Climate change
KW - Deep convection
KW - Extreme events
KW - Precipitation probability
KW - Rainfall
KW - Stochastic model
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85126361100&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s40641-021-00177-z
DO - 10.1007/s40641-021-00177-z
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85126361100
VL - 8
SP - 17
EP - 33
JO - Current Climate Change Reports
JF - Current Climate Change Reports
SN - 2198-6061
IS - 1
ER -