State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (LASG)
Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Vol.11/No.11 November 2019
Intensified Global Monsoon Extreme Rainfall Signals Global Warming— A Study
Global warming has already led to significant increases in extreme rainfall over the global land monsoon regions over the past century, according to a study recently published in Journal of Climate.
The research, providing a global perspective of the monsoon regions which sprawl north and south from the Earth’s equator, reveals significant associations between global warming and the observed intensification of extreme rainfall over the global monsoon region and its several subregions, including the southern part of South Africa, India, North America and the eastern part of the South America.
To maximize the data coverage for analysis, scientists combined several sets of long-running, high-quality global and regional extreme precipitation observations currently available. Employing rigorous statistical tests, they demonstrated that the significant influence of global warming on regional extreme rainfall changes is robust regardless of different time periods of analysis, criteria of selecting stations and datasets used.
Response of annual maximum daily precipitation to global mean near-surface air temperature changes over 1901-2010 from the merged observational datasets over monsoon subregions (unit: percent change per degree of global warming, %/K). The map shows the division of monsoon subregions. Each dot denotes an observing station. Note extreme precipitation changes on station scales are also affected by climate noise apart from global warming. (Image by ZHANG Wenxia)
This work was jointly supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China, International Partnership Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation.
Reference:
Zhang Wenxia, Zhou Tianjun. 2019. Significant increases in extreme precipitation and the associations with global warming over the global land monsoon regions. Journal of Climate, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-18-0662.1 .
Contact : ZHOU Tianjun, zhoutj@lasg.iap.ac.cn
E-mail: lasg_newsletter@lasg.iap.ac.cn
Editors: Chuanyi Wang (wangcy@lasg.iap.ac.cn), Kangjun Chen(ckj@lasg.iap.ac.cn)