Science Source

The future intensification of hourly precipitation extremes

States that extreme precipitation intensities have increased in all regions of the Contiguous United States (CONUS) and are expected to further increase with warming at scaling rates of about 7% per degree Celsius, suggesting a significant increase of flash flood hazards due to climate change
States, however, that the scaling rates between extreme precipitation and temperature are strongly dependent on the region, temperature, and moisture availability, which inhibits simple extrapolation of the scaling rate from past climate data into the future
Studies observed and simulated changes in local precipitation extremes over the CONUS by analyzing a very high resolution (4 km horizontal grid spacing) current and high-end climate scenario that realistically simulates hourly precipitation extremes
Shows that extreme precipitation is increasing with temperature in moist, energy-limited, environments and decreases abruptly in dry, moisture-limited, environments
This novel framework explains the large variability in the observed and modeled scaling rates and helps with understanding the significant frequency and intensity increases in future hourly extreme precipitation events and their interaction with larger scales