Intensification of short-duration rainfall extremes and implications for flood risk: current state of the art and future directions

Fowler, Hayley J.; Wasko, Conrad; Prein, Andreas F.

doi:10.1098/rsta.2019.0541

Cited by 72 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 43 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Indeed, robust increases in the magnitude of daily rainfall were identified in both observations and climate models over the last half of the 20th century (Min et al 2011;Westra et al 2013), with an expected intensification of rainfall extremes in the decades to come (Donat et al 2016). There is also considerable evidence that short-duration (subdaily) rainfall extremes are becoming more intense, as highlighted by Westra et al (2014) and Fowler et al (2021a, b), resulting in increased flood risk (Fowler et al 2021c). This increase in rainfall intensity will potentially lead to a reduction in water security, as water will not redistribute from the soil to the surface reservoirs, leading to plant water stress and issues in agriculture (Eekhout et al 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Climate Change and Rainfall Intensity–Duration–Frequency Curves: Overview of Science and Guidelines for Adaptation

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

One of the most important impacts of a future warmer climate is the projected increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events. This increasing trend in extreme rainfall is seen in both the observational record and climate model projections. However, a thorough review of the recent scientific literature paints a complex picture in which the intensification of rainfall extremes depends on a multitude of factors. While some projected rainfall indices follow the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship scaling of an ∼7% increase in rainfall per 1°C of warming, there is substantial evidence that this scaling depends on rainfall extremes frequency, with longer return period events seeing larger increases, leading to super Clausius-Clapeyron scaling in some cases. The intensification of extreme rainfall events is now well documented at the daily scale but is less clear at the subdaily scale. In recent years, climate model simulations at a finer spatial and temporal resolution, including convection-permitting models, have provided more reliable projections of subdaily rainfall. Recent analyses indicate that rainfall scaling may also increase as a function of duration, such that shorter-duration, longer return period events will likely see the largest rainfall increases in a warmer climate. This has broad implications on the design and the use of rainfall intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) curves, for which both an overall increase in magnitude and a steepening can now be predicted. This paper also presents an overview of measures that have been adopted by various governing bodies to adapt IDF curves to the changing climate. Current measures vary from multiplying historical design rainfall by a simple constant percentage to modulating correction factors based on return periods and to scaling them to the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship based on projected temperature increases. All of these current measures fail to recognize a possible super Clausius-Clapeyron scaling of extreme rainfall and, perhaps more importantly, the increasing scaling toward shorter-duration rainfall and the most extreme rainfall events that will significantly impact stormwater runoff in cities and in small rural catchments. This paper discusses the remaining scientific gaps and offers technical recommendations for practitioners on how to adapt IDF curves to improve climate resilience.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Climate Change and Rainfall Intensity–Duration–Frequency Curves: Overview of Science and Guidelines for Adaptation

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Other important benefits in the use of CPRCMs to bridge the gap between GCMs and end‐users (Maraun et al, 2010) come from their capacity to simulate sub‐daily and shorter duration precipitation, including extremes (Barbero et al, 2019; Fowler et al, 2021a,b,c; Gutjahr et al, 2016; Tölle et al, 2018; Vergara‐Temprado et al, 2021; Westra et al, 2014). CPRCMs are capable of more realistically simulating fine‐scale meteorological phenomena that produce large amounts of rainfall, such as MCS (Feng et al, 2018; Prein et al, 2021; Prein, Liu, et al, 2020; Prein, Liu, Ikeda, et al, 2017), stronger tropical cyclones with lower central minimum pressure (Gutmann et al, 2018; Kanada et al, 2013), orographic precipitation (Jing et al, 2018; Prein, Holland, et al, 2013; Reder et al, 2020), drylines (Scaff et al, 2021), and squall lines (Purr et al, 2019).…”

Section: Evidence Of Added Value In Cprcm Hindcast Simulationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The improved physical realism of CPRCMs has proven to affect the sub‐daily extremes with a general intensification of hourly peak intensity (Ban et al, 2015; Fosser, Kendon, Stephenson, & Tucker, 2020; Fowler et al, 2021a,b,c; Hodnebrog et al, 2019; Huang, Swain, & Hall, 2020; Kendon et al, 2014, 2019; Knist et al, 2020a; Lenderink et al, 2019; Prein, Rasmussen, Ikeda, et al, 2017; Vergara‐Temprado et al, 2021). At mid‐latitudes, the improvement is most apparent in summertime extremes, where convection is playing a large role for the most intense events (Fosser, Kendon, Stephenson, & Tucker, 2020; Kendon et al, 2014).…”

Section: Cprcm Benefits For Impact Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Convection‐permitting modeling with regional climate models: Latest developments and next steps

Lucas‐Picher

Argüeso

Brisson

et al. 2021

WIREs Climate Change

134

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Approximately 10 years ago, convection-permitting regional climate models (CPRCMs) emerged as a promising computationally affordable tool to produce fine resolution (1-4 km) decadal-long climate simulations with explicitly resolved deep convection. This explicit representation is expected to reduce climate projection uncertainty related to deep convection parameterizations found in most climate models. A recent surge in CPRCM decadal simulations over larger domains, sometimes covering continents, has led to important insights into CPRCM advantages and limitations. Furthermore, new observational gridded datasets with fine spatial and temporal ($1 km; $1 h) resolutions have leveraged additional knowledge through evaluations of the added value of CPRCMs. With an improved coordination in the frame of ongoing international initiatives, the production of ensembles of CPRCM simulations is expected to provide more robust climate projections and a better identification of their associated uncertainties. This review paper presents an overview of the methodology to produce CPRCM simulations and the latest research on the related added value in current and future climates. Impact studies that are already taking advantage of these new CPRCM simulations are highlighted. This review paper ends by proposing next steps that could be accomplished to continue exploiting the full potential of CPRCMs.

show abstract

“…The PGW methodology imposes a certain climate change, for example, temperature rise, over the initial and boundary conditions of a regional model, by prescribing the synoptic and larger‐scale changes from GCMs, while allowing smaller scale features to develop freely within a downscaled modeled domain in a physically consistent manner. Further, projections of precipitation extremes under global warming scenarios commonly focus on daily resolutions (Donat et al., 2016; O’Gorman, 2015; Pfahl et al., 2017), which hinders the possible impact of short‐duration extremes; only recently more studies have directed attention to changes expected over subdaily or even subhourly extremes (Fowler, Ali, et al., 2021; Fowler, Wasko, & Prein, 2021; Morrison et al., 2019). However, to understand the potential effects of changes in precipitation extremes, not only their changing intensity and frequency are important, but also high‐resolution changes in intra‐event characteristics, such as the spatiotemporal organization of the storms (Li et al., 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reduced Rainfall in Future Heavy Precipitation Events Related to Contracted Rain Area Despite Increased Rain Rate

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Heavy precipitation events (HPEs) can lead to deadly and costly natural disasters and are critical to the hydrological budget in regions where rainfall variability is high and water resources depend on individual storms. Thus, reliable projections of such events in the future are needed. To provide high‐resolution projections under the RCP8.5 scenario for HPEs at the end of the 21st century, and to understand the changes in sub‐hourly to daily rainfall patterns, weather research and forecasting (WRF) model simulations of 41 historic HPEs in the eastern Mediterranean are compared with “pseudo global warming” simulations of the same events. This paper presents the changes in rainfall patterns in future storms, decomposed into storms' mean conditional rain rate, duration, and area. A major decrease in rainfall accumulation (−30% averaged across events) is found throughout future HPEs. This decrease results from a substantial reduction of the rain area of storms (−40%) and occurs despite an increase in the mean conditional rain intensity (+15%). The duration of the HPEs decreases (−9%) in future simulations. Regionally maximal 10‐min rain rates increase (+22%), whereas over most of the region, long‐duration rain rates decrease. The consistency of results across events, driven by varying synoptic conditions, suggests that these changes have low sensitivity to the specific synoptic evolution during the events. Future HPEs in the eastern Mediterranean will therefore likely be drier and more spatiotemporally concentrated, with substantial implications on hydrological outcomes of storms.

show abstract

Intensification of short-duration rainfall extremes and implications for flood risk: current state of the art and future directions

Abstract: One contribution of 14 to a discussion meeting issue 'Intensification of short-duration rainfall extremes and implications for flash flood risks'.

Cited by 72 publications

References 43 publications

Climate Change and Rainfall Intensity–Duration–Frequency Curves: Overview of Science and Guidelines for Adaptation

Climate Change and Rainfall Intensity–Duration–Frequency Curves: Overview of Science and Guidelines for Adaptation

Convection‐permitting modeling with regional climate models: Latest developments and next steps

Reduced Rainfall in Future Heavy Precipitation Events Related to Contracted Rain Area Despite Increased Rain Rate

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About