Journal
WEATHER AND CLIMATE EXTREMES
Volume 35, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.wace.2022.100417
Keywords
Precipitation in the contiguous United States; Trend detection; Sensitivity to global warming
Categories
Funding
- National Key Research and Development Program of China [2017YFA0603804]
- Asia-Pacific-Network for Global Change Research [CBA2019-12SY-Jiang]
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This study examines changes in characteristics of daily precipitation in the contiguous United States using high-quality records for a long-term period and a more recent period at different temporal and spatial scales. The results show similar patterns of change during the two periods, with an overall increase in total annual precipitation, frequency of wet days, and intensity of precipitation in the CONUS. Stations with significant increasing trends are mainly concentrated in eastern CONUS, while stations with decreasing trends are located on the west coast and partial southeast coast. The findings also indicate non-uniform changes in different sub-regions and seasons, with heavier precipitation events contributing more to the annual total precipitation.
This study examines changes in characteristics (amount, frequency, intensity) of daily precipitation in the contiguous United States (CONUS) using high-quality records for a long-term period (1900-2018) and a more recent period (1950-2018) at different temporal (annual and seasonal scales) and different spatial scales (national and sub-regional scales). Results show that the patterns of change during the two periods are very similar. First, on the annual basis, we find an overall increase in the total annual precipitation, frequency of wet days, and intensity of precipitation in both periods in the CONUS, with percentages of stations showing significant increasing trends significantly larger than what can be expected by chance. Second, stations with significant increasing trends are mainly concentrated in eastern CONUS, while stations with decreasing trends are located on the west coast and partial southeast coast. Specifically, the amounts and frequencies of light, moderate, and heavy precipitation mostly have significantly increased at more than 10% of stations. In both periods, there is a non-uniform change for three intensity categories of precipitation, with the frequency and total amount of events with higher intensity showing a larger rate of change, resulting in the smaller contribution of light precipitation to annual total precipitation but larger contribution due to heavy precipitation. Such non-uniform changes can also be observed in most sub-regions and seasons. Moreover, the estimated sensitivities of the amount of light, moderate, heavy precipitation, and heaviest precipitation event to global surface temperature increase for the 1900-2018 period is comparable with that for the 1950-2018 period, indicating that sampling period does not have a substantial effect on the scaling relationship between the amount of different precipitation events and global mean temperature.
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