Distributions of tropical precipitation cluster power and their changes under global warming. Part I: observational baseline and comparison to a high-resolution atmospheric model

Details

• Journal Title:
  Journal of Climate
• Personal Author:
  Quinn, Kevin M. ; Neelin, J. David
• Corporate Authors:
  United States. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research ; Earth System Research Laboratory (U.S.) ; Physical Sciences Laboratory (U.S.) ; Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections Program (U.S.)
• NOAA Program & Office:
  OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) ; CPO (Climate Program Office) ; ESRL (Earth System Research Laboratory) ; PSL (Physical Sciences Laboratory)
• Description:
  Distributions of precipitation cluster power (latent heat release rate integrated over contiguous precipitating pixels) are examined in 1°–2°-resolution members of phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) climate model ensemble. These approximately reproduce the power-law range and large event cutoff seen in observations and the High Resolution Atmospheric Model (HiRAM) at 0.25°–0.5° in . Under the representative concentration pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) global warming scenario, the change in the probability of the most intense storm clusters appears in all models and is consistent with HiRAM output, increasing by up to an order of magnitude relative to historical climate. For the three models in the ensemble with continuous time series of high-resolution output, there is substantial variability on when these probability increases for the most powerful storm clusters become detectable, ranging from detectable within the observational period to statistically significant trends emerging only after 2050. A similar analysis of National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)–U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) AMIP-II reanalysis and Special Sensor Microwave Imager and Imager/Sounder (SSM/I and SSMIS) rain-rate retrievals in the recent observational record does not yield reliable evidence of trends in high power cluster probabilities at this time. However, the results suggest that maintaining a consistent set of overlapping satellite instrumentation with improvements to SSM/I–SSMIS rain-rate retrieval intercalibrations would be useful for detecting trends in this important tail behavior within the next couple of decades.
• Keywords:
  Climatic Changes Climatology Convection Energy Budget Forecasting Microwave Optics Models Climatic Changes Energy Budget Microwave Optics Balance Climate Change Climate Prediction Coupled Models Energy Budget Microwave Observations

  More +
• Source:
  Journal of Climate, 30(20), 8045-8059.
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0683.1
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  Grant no. NA15OAR4310097 ; Grant no. NA14OAR4310274
• Rights Information:
  Other
• Compliance:
  Submitted
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:71ce2ec9349a01a68bfa349760517d4123b8b72caf33aa3a156e49233576db67
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/28414/noaa_28414_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 2.24 MB ]