Universality of rain event size distributions

Peters, Ole; Deluca, Anna; Corral, √Ålvaro; Neelin, J. David; Holloway, Christopher E.

doi:10.1088/1742-5468/2010/11/p11030

Cited by 79 publications

(151 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Indeed, while all of the explicit convection runs have probability densities similar to a power-law distribution across most of their range before decreasing exponentially at very high rain rates (similar to recent observational studies; DeMott et al, 2007;Field and Shutts, 2009;Peters et al, 2010), the 12 km param model with parametrized convection has a positive deviation from this type of power-law distribution, suggesting a 'preferred' scale of rainfall centred around 0.4 mm h −1 (10 mm day −1 ). Rainfall rates around this value contribute more to the total rainfall in this model than higher or lower rates, unlike observations and explicit convection runs.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

“…These numbers are consistent with the discussion above regarding model differences, with more occurrences of rainfall at a fairly low average rain rate (near the apparent preferred scale) for the 12 km param model and fewer occurrences with higher average rain rates for the observations and the explicit convection models (with especially infrequent, heavy rain for the 4 km 3Dsmag and 12 km 3Dsmag models). The rough power-law relationship of −1 for lower values of precipitation for both the 4 km runs and TRMM (Figure 2(a)) compares well with rain-rate distributions from several tropical observation sites (Peters et al, 2010, their figure 1). This value of the power law implies an equal contribution at all scales, which is evident in Figure 2(b).…”

Section: Precipitation Distributionssupporting

confidence: 62%

“…Observations over tropical regions show roughly power-law behaviour of precipitation distributions at lower rain rates, with faster, exponential decreases as very high rain rates are approached (DeMott et al, 2007;Field and Shutts, 2009;Peters et al, 2010). In this article, we compare different runs of the same model over different horizontal resolutions with both parametrized and explicit convection for a real case over a large domain covering the tropical Indian and Western Pacific oceans.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Precipitation distributions for explicit versus parametrized convection in a large‐domain high‐resolution tropical case study

Holloway

Woolnough

Lister

2012

Quart J Royal Meteoro Soc

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

Section: Precipitation Distributionssupporting

confidence: 62%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Precipitation distributions for explicit versus parametrized convection in a large‐domain high‐resolution tropical case study

Holloway

Woolnough

Lister

2012

Quart J Royal Meteoro Soc

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“…For Case 1, one has a simple Fokker-Planck equation (30) with τ = 3/2 and sL = 2D for Case 1, for s above a small-event cutoff (Eq. S3) that is too small to see in gauge observations (18,19) or in the climate model. Features of this solution are seen in the top pair of curves of Fig.…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 95%

“…Here, we derive a stochastic prototype from a fundamental climate model equation. This leads to an explanation of key properties of the probability density function (pdf) of accumulations noted in station observations (18)(19)(20)-why the pdf of accumulation size drops slowly with increasing size over many orders of magnitude before reaching a cutoff scale, after which the pdf drops rapidly for very large accumulations. From the theory, we show that physical balances creating this behavior regime imply extremely high sensitivity for the very largest events under climate change.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

Global warming precipitation accumulation increases above the current-climate cutoff scale

Neelin

Sahany

Stechmann

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Precipitation accumulations, integrated over rainfall events, can be affected by both intensity and duration of the storm event. Thus, although precipitation intensity is widely projected to increase under global warming, a clear framework for predicting accumulation changes has been lacking, despite the importance of accumulations for societal impacts. Theory for changes in the probability density function (pdf) of precipitation accumulations is presented with an evaluation of these changes in global climate model simulations. We show that a simple set of conditions implies roughly exponential increases in the frequency of the very largest accumulations above a physical cutoff scale, increasing with event size. The pdf exhibits an approximately power-law range where probability density drops slowly with each order of magnitude size increase, up to a cutoff at large accumulations that limits the largest events experienced in current climate. The theory predicts that the cutoff scale, controlled by the interplay of moisture convergence variance and precipitation loss, tends to increase under global warming. Thus, precisely the large accumulations above the cutoff that are currently rare will exhibit increases in the warmer climate as this cutoff is extended. This indeed occurs in the full climate model, with a 3 • C end-of-century global-average warming yielding regional increases of hundreds of percent to >1,000% in the probability density of the largest accumulations that have historical precedents. The probabilities of unprecedented accumulations are also consistent with the extension of the cutoff.precipitation accumulation | global warming | extreme events | stochastic modeling | first-passage process O ccurrences of intense precipitation are projected to increase (1-8) associated with higher atmospheric moisture content (9, 10) under global warming. Measures of precipitation intensity, coarse-grained to 1-to 5-d intervals, exhibit end-of-century increases on the order of 20% for wettest annual 5-d rainfall (8) or 10% in average wet-day intensity (11) or 17%• C in the 99.9th to 99.999th percentiles of daily precipitation (12) in businessas-usual anthropogenic forcing scenarios. Associated with this, substantial increases in frequency of high-rain-rate events can occur (13-15), and the return times of events exceeding a given threshold decrease (16).Time-integrated accumulation, the amount of precipitation that falls during a single event, is of concern for many societal impacts (17). Because more intense precipitation could, in principle, yield shorter event durations (10), the expected change in accumulation probabilities is unclear. Here, we derive a stochastic prototype from a fundamental climate model equation. This leads to an explanation of key properties of the probability density function (pdf) of accumulations noted in station observations (18-20)-why the pdf of accumulation size drops slowly with increasing size over many orders of magnitude before reaching a cutoff scale, after which the pdf drops...

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The size distribution of spatiotemporal extreme rainfall clusters around the globe

Traxl

Boers

Rheinwalt

et al. 2016

Geophysical Research Letters

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The scaling behavior of rainfall has been extensively studied both in terms of event magnitudes and in terms of spatial extents of the events. Different heavy‐tailed distributions have been proposed as candidates for both instances, but statistically rigorous treatments are rare. Here we combine the domains of event magnitudes and event area sizes by a spatiotemporal integration of 3‐hourly rain rates corresponding to extreme events derived from the quasi‐global high‐resolution rainfall product Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission 3B42. A maximum likelihood evaluation reveals that the distribution of spatiotemporally integrated extreme rainfall cluster sizes over the oceans is best described by a truncated power law, calling into question previous statements about scale‐free distributions. The observed subpower law behavior of the distribution's tail is evaluated with a simple generative model, which indicates that the exponential truncation of an otherwise scale‐free spatiotemporal cluster size distribution over the oceans could be explained by the existence of land masses on the globe.

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Universality of rain event size distributions

Cited by 79 publications

References 30 publications

Precipitation distributions for explicit versus parametrized convection in a large‐domain high‐resolution tropical case study

Precipitation distributions for explicit versus parametrized convection in a large‐domain high‐resolution tropical case study

Global warming precipitation accumulation increases above the current-climate cutoff scale

The size distribution of spatiotemporal extreme rainfall clusters around the globe

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