Changes in Temperature and Precipitation Extremes in Superparameterized CAM in Response to Warmer SSTs
- School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University, State University of New York, Stony Brook, New York
Subdaily temperature and precipitation extremes in response to warmer SSTs are investigated on a global scale using the superparameterized (SP) Community Atmosphere Model (CAM), in which a cloud-resolving model is embedded in each CAM grid column to simulate convection explicitly. Two 10-yr simulations have been performed using present climatological sea surface temperature (SST) and perturbed SST climatology derived from the representative concentration pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) scenario. Compared with the conventional CAM, SP-CAM simulates colder temperatures and more realistic intensity distribution of precipitation, especially for heavy precipitation. The temperature and precipitation extremes have been defined by the 99th percentile of the 3-hourly data. For temperature, the changes in the warm and cold extremes are generally consistent between CAM and SP-CAM, with larger changes in warm extremes at low latitudes and larger changes in cold extremes at mid-to-high latitudes. For precipitation, CAM predicts a uniform increase of frequency of precipitation extremes regardless of the rain rate, while SP-CAM predicts a monotonic increase of frequency with increasing rain rate and larger change of intensity for heavier precipitation. The changes in 3-hourly and daily temperature extremes are found to be similar; however, the 3-hourly precipitation extremes have a significantly larger change than daily extremes. The Clausius–Clapeyron scaling is found to be a relatively good predictor of zonally averaged changes in precipitation extremes over midlatitudes but not as good over the tropics and subtropics. The changes in precipitable water and large-scale vertical velocity are equally important to explain the changes in precipitation extremes.
- Research Organization:
- State Univ. of New York (SUNY), Albany, NY (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- DESC0012488; SC0012488
- OSTI ID:
- 1409142
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1541840
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Climate, Journal Name: Journal of Climate Vol. 30 Journal Issue: 24; ISSN 0894-8755
- Publisher:
- American Meteorological SocietyCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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