Toward Narrowing Uncertainty in Future Projections of Local Extreme Precipitation

Marra, Francesco; Armon, Moshe; Adam, Ori; Zoccatelli, Davide; Gazal, Osama; Garfinkel, Chaim I.; Rostkier‐Edelstein, Dorita; Dayan, Uri; Enzel, Yehouda; Morin, Efrat

doi:10.1029/2020gl091823

Cited by 22 publications

(19 citation statements)

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“…While these can be obtained using a framework which accounts for the frequency of events (Marra et al., 2019), the results we obtain have significance in drawing possible future scenarios for some of the heaviest precipitation events in the region. High resolution rainfall projections can also help improve future predictions in approaches requiring a changed rainfall distribution (Marra et al., 2021).…”

Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The focus here is on the eastern Mediterranean (Figure 1), which (a) is expected to suffer from a large future decrease in total rainfall (Garfinkel et al., 2020; Giorgi & Lionello, 2008; Zappa et al., 2015), (b) may experience an increase in extreme precipitation occurrence (Alpert et al., 2002; Marra et al., 2021; Samuels et al., 2017), (c) is characterized by the least precipitation per capita in the world (Dirmeyer et al., 2009), and (d) is exposed to large rainfall variability (Morin, 2011). These characteristics result in a large dependency on HPEs, in terms of water resources and vulnerability to natural hazards; therefore, we explore here possible future changes in HPEs in the region, and disassemble them to their distinct hydrometeorological constituents.…”

Section: Study Region Data and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2021

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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.

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Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Study Region Data and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2021

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“…Specifically, it could help (i) improving the quantification of local return levels without the need for homogeneity and/or temporal scaling assumptions and (ii) increasing the understanding of the local climatology of extreme multi-duration precipitation. In addition, (iii) it could be combined with information from climate models and local constraints (e.g., Marra et al, 2021a) to derive observationally-sound projections of future extreme return levels of interest for climate change impact studies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Heavy precipitation processes are generally convective and characterized by high spatiotemporal variability, so that rain gauge monitoring is often insufficient (Yakir and Morin, 2011;Peleg et al, 2013;. Climate models project substantial changes in both the intensity and the occurrence of these systems (Hochman et al, 2018;Zappa et al, 2015), with complicated effects on compound extremes (Marra et al, 2019b;Marra et al, 2021a).…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Storms are defined based on the daily rain gauge archive as consecutive wet days (³5 stations recording ³0.1 mm). Weather types are defined according to the classification presented in Marra et al (2021a), which is a simplification of the semi-objective classification by Alpert et al (2004). It is worth noting that, although the framework allows to separately consider different weather types, the use of a unique weather type is not crucial for the accurate estimation of return levels in the study area (see ; separate consideration of the 2 weather types is here included to grant compatibility with future studies involving climate projections, for which the distinct use of weather types is crucial (e.g., Marra et al, 2021a).…”

Section: Extreme Value Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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Coastal and orographic effects on extreme precipitation revealed by weather radar observations

Marra

Armon

Morin

2021

Preprint

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Abstract. The yearly exceedance probability of extreme precipitation of multiple durations is crucial for infrastructure design, risk management and policymaking. Local extremes emerge from the interaction of weather systems with local terrain features such as coastlines and orography, however multi-duration extremes do not follow exactly the patterns of cumulative precipitation and are still not well understood. High-resolution information from weather radars could help us better quantifying their patterns, but traditional extreme-value analyses based on radar records were found too inaccurate for quantifying the extreme intensities for impact studies. Here, we propose a novel methodology for extreme precipitation frequency analysis based on relatively short weather radar records, and we use it to investigate coastal and orographic effects on extreme precipitation of durations between 10 minutes and 24 hours. Combining 11 years of radar data with 10-minute rain gauge data in the southeastern Mediterranean, we obtain estimates of the 1 in 100 years intensities with ~22 % standard error, which is lower than those obtained using traditional approaches on rain gauge data. We identify three distinct regimes, which respond differently to coastal and orographic forcing: short durations (~10 minutes), related to peak convective rain rates; hourly durations (~1 hours), related to the yield of individual convective cells; and long durations (~6–24 hours), related to the accumulation of multiple convective cells and to stratiform processes. At short and hourly durations, extreme return levels peak at the coastline, while at longer durations they peak corresponding to the orographic barriers. The distributions tail heaviness is rather uniform above the sea and rapidly changes in presence of orography, with opposing directions at short (decreasing tail heaviness, with a peak at hourly durations) and long (increasing) durations. These distinct effects suggest that short-scale hazards such as urban pluvial floods could be more of concern for the coastal regions, while longer-scale hazards such as flash floods could be more relevant in mountainous areas.

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Protection gaps in Amazon floodplains will increase with climate change: Insight from the world's largest scaled freshwater fish

Dubos

Lenormand

Castello

et al. 2022

Aquatic Conservation

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1. The Amazon floodplains represent important surfaces of highly valuable ecosystems, yet they remain neglected from protected areas. Although the efficiency of the protected area network of the Amazon basin may be jeopardized by climate change, floodplains are exposed to important consequences of climate change but are omitted from species distribution models and protection gap analyses.2. The present and future (2070) distribution of the giant bony-tongue fish Arapaima spp. (Arapaimidae) was modelled accounting for climate and habitat requirements, and with a consideration of dam presence (already existing and planned constructions) and hydroperiod (high-and low-water stages). The amount of suitable environment that falls inside and outside the current network of protected areas was quantified to identify spatial conservation gaps.3. We predict that climate change will cause a decline in environmental suitability by 16.6% during the high-water stage, and by 19.4% during the low-water stage. About 70% of the suitable environments of Arapaima spp. remain currently unprotected. The gap is higher by 0.7% during the low-water stage. The lack of protection is likely to increase by 5% with future climate change effects. Both existing and projected dam constructions may hamper population flows between the central, Bolivian and Peruvian parts of the basin. 4. We highlight protection gaps mostly in the south-western part of the basin and recommend the extension of the current network of protected areas in the floodplains of the upper Ucayali, Juruà and Purus rivers and their tributaries. This study has shown the importance of integrating hydroperiod and dispersal barriers in forecasting the distribution of freshwater fish species, and stresses the urgent need to integrate floodplains within the protected area networks.

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Toward Narrowing Uncertainty in Future Projections of Local Extreme Precipitation

Cited by 22 publications

References 68 publications

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

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

Coastal and orographic effects on extreme precipitation revealed by weather radar observations

Protection gaps in Amazon floodplains will increase with climate change: Insight from the world's largest scaled freshwater fish

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