Climate models generally project wetter winters for the US Southwest under global warming. Dong et al. discovered a strong relationship between a common model bias with future precipitation changes over this region. More specifically, models with excessive double-ITCZ biases tend to exaggerate the future precipitation increase.
Najibi, Devineni, and co-authors present a new idea defined as simultaneous heavy precipitation events (SHPEs) to quantify extreme regional precipitation considering the spatial structure of extreme events. Quantifying the characteristics of SHPEs and modeling their footprints can improve the projections of flood risk and understanding of damages to interconnected infrastructure systems.
A recent study by Song et al. discovered contrasting phase changes of the precipitation annual cycle between land and ocean under global warming, with land delay and ocean advance by examining simulations from 37 CMIP5 models and five large ensembles. They found that the seasonal delay of lands is mainly attributable to the increased effective heat capacity, while there exists a competing mechanism against the impact of increased capacity for the ocean precipitation.
A Bayesian network inference model was developed to account for and predict the likelihood of floods of various durations using physics informed predictors.
A new study shows that a simple linear model that accounts for changes in mean source distance, as well as the local drying ratio, can successfully replicate water isotopic variations in space and time.
To improve estimates of risks associated with megadroughts, researchers look at improving the understanding of ENSO/AMO behavior, their teleconnections, and their response to volcanic eruptions in climate models.
Researchers found that atmospheric rivers that impact the West Coast contain more tropical moisture than average, indicating that long-distance transport of tropical moisture does occur.
The most extreme increases in the oxygen 18-to-16 ratio over the last fifty thousand years occur immediately after Heinrich events, strongly suggesting that tropical rainfall shifted south in response to Heinrich events.
Researchers have developed a state-of-the-art drought and wildfire prediction system, showing the multi-year predictive skills of drought and wildfire conditions beyond the typical timescale of seasonal climate forecast models.
A multi-model simulation study shows that Atlantic Multidecadal Variability warming drives a modification of the Walker Circulation that creates precipitation anomalies over the whole tropical belt.
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