Donghyun Lee, Seung-Ki Min, Erich Fischer, Hideo Shiogama, Ingo Bethke, Ludwig Lierhammer, John F Scinocca

Environmental Research Letters

Published date April 12, 2018

Impacts of half a degree additional warming on the Asian summer monsoon rainfall characteristics

  • Investigates the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C above pre-industrial conditions (Paris Agreement target temperatures) on the South Asian and East Asian monsoon rainfall using five atmospheric global climate models participating in the 'Half a degree Additional warming, Prognosis and Projected Impacts' (HAPPI) project
  • Finds that mean and extreme precipitation is projected to increase under warming over the two monsoon regions, more strongly in the 2.0 °C warmer world
  • Moisture budget analysis shows that increases in evaporation and atmospheric moisture lead to the additional increases in mean precipitation with good inter-model agreement
  • Analysis of daily precipitation characteristics reveals that more-extreme precipitation will have larger increase in intensity and frequency responding to the half a degree additional warming, which is more clearly seen over the South Asian monsoon region, indicating non-linear scaling of precipitation extremes with temperature
  • Strong inter-model relationship between temperature and precipitation intensity further demonstrates that the increased moisture with warming (Clausius-Clapeyron relation) plays a critical role in the stronger intensification of more-extreme rainfall with warming
  • Results from CMIP5 coupled global climate models under a transient warming scenario confirm that half a degree additional warming would bring more frequent and stronger heavy precipitation events, exerting devastating impacts on the human and natural system over the Asian monsoon region

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