Connections Between Mean North Pacific Circulation and Western US Precipitation Extremes in a Warming Climate
- US National Center for Atmospheric Research Boulder CO USA
- Earth Research Institute University of California Santa Barbara CA USA, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management University of California Santa Barbara CA USA
Extreme precipitation has widespread impacts over the western US (WUS), which are expected to be exacerbated in the future given thermodynamically driven increases in atmospheric moisture and shifts in atmospheric circulation patterns. However, internal climate variability complicates how these factors affect future projections of precipitation changes. In this study, we investigate late 21st‐century changes in mean‐state responses over the North Pacific Ocean and associated WUS precipitation extremes using the Multi‐Model Large Ensemble Archive, which is a recent and valuable resource to disentangle the effects of model structural differences from internal variability. We found that inter‐model differences in precipitation extremes over the WUS are large: from south to north (here, from California to Washington), models show different levels of increases for both the frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation. In general, the Pacific Northwest sees a more consistent signal than California. We show that wet‐season mean circulation influences extreme precipitation, by using a decomposition of the relative contributions of thermodynamic (atmospheric humidity) and dynamic (large‐scale circulation) driven changes. The thermodynamic contribution dominates, however, the dynamic contribution varies with latitude and differs substantially between model ensembles. Inter‐model differences affect the spread in not only the magnitude, but also the sign of the dynamic contribution. This implies that mean circulation changes contribute to uncertainty in quantifying the regional structure of concentrated moisture flux and future extreme events. This result highlights the need to more accurately constrain projected North Pacific coupled circulation changes to narrow the spread in projections of future precipitation extremes.
- Research Organization:
- Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States); Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE; USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0019418
- OSTI ID:
- 1787888
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1853236
OSTI ID: 1787890
- Journal Information:
- Earth's Future, Journal Name: Earth's Future Journal Issue: 6 Vol. 9; ISSN 2328-4277
- Publisher:
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)Copyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English