Assessing the present and future probability of Hurricane Harvey’s rainfall
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We estimate, for current and future climates, the annual probability of areally averaged hurricane rain of Hurricane Harvey’s magnitude by downscaling large numbers of tropical cyclones from three climate reanalyses and six climate models. For the state of Texas, we estimate that the annual probability of 500 mm of area-integrated rainfall was about 1% in the period 1981–2000 and will increase to 18% over the period 2081–2100 under Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR5 representative concentration pathway 8.5. If the frequency of such event is increasingly linearly between these two periods, then in 2017 the annual probability would be 6%, a sixfold increase since the late 20th century. Keywords: hurricanes; climate change; floods
Date issued
2017-11Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences; Lorenz Center (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences (U.S.)
Citation
Emanuel, Kerry. “Assessing the Present and Future Probability of Hurricane Harvey’s Rainfall.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, 48 (November 2017): 12681–12684
Version: Final published version
ISSN
0027-8424
1091-6490