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Response of Vertical Velocities in Extratropical Precipitation Extremes to Climate Change
Name
[15200442 - Journal of Climate] Response of Vertical Velocities in Extratropical Precipitation Extremes to Climate Change.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
9.55 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
b2720cacde104663b871b105b1b895ac
Author(s)
Li, Ziwei
O’Gorman, Paul A
Date Issued
2020
Journal
Journal of Climate
Publisher
American Meteorological Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Precipitation extremes intensify in most regions in climate model projections. Changes in vertical velocities contribute to the changes in intensity of precipitation extremes but remain poorly understood. Here, we find that midtropospheric vertical velocities in extratropical precipitation extremes strengthen overall in simulations of twenty-first-century climate change. For each extreme event, we solve the quasigeostrophic omega equation to decompose this strengthening into different physical contributions. We first consider a dry decomposition in which latent heating is treated as an external forcing of upward motion. Much of the positive contribution to upward motion from increased latent heating is offset by negative contributions from increases in dry static stability and changes in the horizontal length scale of vertical velocities. However, taking changes in latent heating as given is a limitation when the aim is to understand changes in precipitation, since latent heating and precipitation are closely linked. Therefore, we also perform a moist decomposition of the changes in vertical velocities in which latent heating is represented through a moist static stability. In the moist decomposition, changes in moist static stability play a key role and contributions from other factors such as changes in the depth of the upward motion increase in importance. While both dry and moist decompositions are self-consistent, the moist dynamical perspective has greater potential to give insights into the causes of the dynamical contributions to changes in precipitation extremes in different regions.
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DOI of Published Version
10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0766.1
