Soil moisture precipitation feedbacks in the Eastern European Alpine region in convection-permitting climate simulations

A novel convection permitting modelling framework that combines a pseudoglobal warming approach with continuously forced deep soil moisture from prescribed perturbation storylines is applied in the Eastern European Alpine region and parts of the Pannonian Basin to investigate soil moisture precipitation (SMP) feedbacks on summertime precipitation and the feedbacks' role under changed climate conditions. A set of 1-year convection-permitting (3 km horizontal grid spacing) soil moisture sensitivity simulations with the regional climate model of the Consortium for Small-Scale Modelling in Climate Mode are conducted. In order to account for global warming, end-of-the-century climate change effects from four global climate models, projecting the greenhouse gas concentration scenario RCP 8.5, are imprinted. The simulations reveal that (1) the locations of precipitation events are highly sensitive to soil moisture modifications while intensities and the internal structure of precipitation events are nearly unaffected and (2) high precipitation intensities are more likely in combinations with positive temporal but distinctive (either strong positive or strong negative) spatial SMP coupling. Low precipitation intensities are in favour of combinations of negative temporal and positive spatial coupling. The analyses suggest that soil moisture at a given time acts as a guiding field for the location of the next precipitation event. Interestingly, this behaviour is independent of climate change, although the coupling strength's increase is 1.5-1.7 times larger than expected from linear climate change scaling when climate becomes 50% dryer. Finally, it is found that (1) local deviations in the climate change signal of summertime precipitation in the range of up to +/- 40% are caused by uncertainty in deep soil moisture in the range of +/- 10% and (2) these local deviations in the climate change signal are dominated by soil moisture uncertainty in future climate conditions.

Automated summary

A novel convection permitting modelling framework is used to investigate the effects of soil moisture on summertime precipitation in the Eastern European Alpine region and parts of the Pannonian Basin. The simulations reveal that the locations of precipitation events are highly sensitive to soil moisture modifications, while the intensities and internal structures of precipitation events are minimally affected. The study also finds that high precipitation intensities are more likely in combinations with positive temporal and distinctive spatial soil moisture-precipitation coupling. The research highlights the importance of soil moisture as a guiding factor for precipitation events, independent of climate change.