Journal
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
Volume 30, Issue 4, Pages 1381-1396Publisher
AMER METEOROLOGICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0311.1
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Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [41420104006, 41330423]
- China R&D Special Fund for Public Welfare Industry (meteorology) [GYHY201406020]
- UK-China Research and Innovation Partnership Fund through the Met Office Climate Science for Service Partnership (CSSP) China as part of the Newton Fund
- U.S. National Science Foundation [AGS-1353740]
- U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science [DE-SC0012602]
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NA15OAR4310086]
- ERC [EC-320691]
- U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science as part of the Earth System Modeling Program
- Battelle Memorial Institute [DE-AC05-76RL01830]
- Directorate For Geosciences
- Div Atmospheric & Geospace Sciences [1353740] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Changes in precipitation characteristics directly affect society through their impacts on drought and floods, hydro-dams, and urban drainage systems. Global warming increases the water holding capacity of the atmosphere and thus the risk of heavy precipitation. Here, daily precipitation records fromover 700 Chinese stations from1956 to 2005 are analyzed. The results show a significant shift fromlight to heavy precipitation over eastern China. An optimal fingerprinting analysis of simulations from 11 climate models driven by different combinations of historical anthropogenic (greenhouse gases, aerosols, land use, and ozone) and natural (volcanic and solar) forcings indicates that anthropogenic forcing on climate, including increases in greenhouse gases (GHGs), has had a detectable contribution to the observed shift toward heavy precipitation. Some evidence is found that anthropogenic aerosols (AAs) partially offset the effect of the GHG forcing, resulting in a weaker shift toward heavy precipitation in simulations that include theAAforcing than in simulationswith only theGHGforcing. In addition to the thermodynamic mechanism, strengthened water vapor transport from the adjacent oceans and by midlatitude westerlies, resulting mainly from GHG-induced warming, also favors heavy precipitation over eastern China. Further GHG-induced warming is predicted to lead to an increasing shift toward heavy precipitation, leading to increased urban flooding and posing a significant challenge for mega-cities in China in the coming decades. Future reductions in AA emissions resulting from air pollution controls could exacerbate this tendency toward heavier precipitation.
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