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Interdecadal variability/long-term changes in global precipitation patterns during the past three decades: global warming and/or pacific decadal variability?

Explores how global precipitation and tropospheric water vapor content vary on the interdecadal/long-term time scale during past three decades (1988–2010 for water vapor)
Explores, in particular, to what extent the spatial structures of their variations relate to changes in surface temperature
EOF analyses of satellite-based products indicate that the first two modes of global precipitation and columnar water vapor content anomalies are in general related to the El Niño-Southern oscillation
States that global mean sea surface temperature (SST) and land surface temperature have increased during the past three decades, but the water vapor and precipitation patterns of change do not reflect the pattern of warming, in particular in the tropical Pacific basin
States that other mechanisms in addition to global warming likely exist to account for the spatial structures of global precipitation changes during this time period
An EOF analysis of longer-record (1949–2010) SST anomalies within the Pacific basin (60°N–60°S) indicates the existence of a strong climate regime shift around 1998/1999, which might be associated with the Pacific decadal variability (PDV) as suggested in past studies
Analyses indicate that the observed linear changes/trends in both precipitation and tropospheric water vapor during 1988–2010 seem to result from a combined impact of global mean surface warming and the PDV shift
In particular, in the tropical central-eastern Pacific, a band of increases along the equator in both precipitation and water vapor sandwiched by strong decreases south and north of it are likely caused by the opposite effects from global-mean surface warming and PDV-related, La Niña-like cooling in the tropical central-eastern Pacific
Concludes this narrow band of precipitation increase could also be considered an evidence for the influence of global mean surface warming

Interdecadal variability/long-term changes in global precipitation patterns during the past three decades: global warming and/or pacific decadal variability?

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