CliMAS Colloquia

"Understanding regional patterns in the response of precipitation extremes to climate change"

Extreme precipitation events are projected to intensify with climate change with important impacts on society.  The intensity of convective precipitation extremes is thought to scale, to first order, with near-surface specific humidity which increases with warming. However, precipitation extremes in the current climate and their projected changes have large spatial variations that are not captured by scaling with specific humidity. Recent modeling studies suggest that relative humidity has an additional influence on precipitation extremes through distinct physical mechanisms such as changes in precipitation efficiency. In this talk, I will discuss how taking relative humidity into account helps to explain both the observed spatial pattern of precipitation extremes over land and their response to climate change.