Open Access
Detection of spatially aggregated changes in temperature and precipitation extremes
Erich M. Fischer,Reto Knutti +1 more
- pp 12115
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TLDR
In this article, the authors used a spatially aggregated perspective to detect a distinct intensification of heavy precipitation events and hot extremes and showed that much of the local to regional differences in trends of extremes can be explained by internal variability, which can regionally mask or amplify the forced long-term trends.Abstract:
Observed trends in the intensity of hot and cold extremes as well as in dry spell length and heavy precipitation intensity are often not significant at local scales. However, using a spatially aggregated perspective, we demonstrate that the probability distribution of observed local trends across the globe for the period 1960–2010 is clearly different to what would be expected from internal variability. We detect a distinct intensification of heavy precipitation events and hot extremes. We show that CMIP5 models generally capture the observed shift in the trend distribution but tend to underestimate the intensification of heavy precipitation and cold extremes and overestimate the intensification in hot extremes. Using an initial condition experiment sampling internal variability, we demonstrate that much of the local to regional differences in trends of extremes can be explained by internal variability, which can regionally mask or amplify the forced long-term trends for many decades.read more
Citations
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Global increasing trends in annual maximum daily precipitation
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the presence of trends in annual maximum daily precipitation time series obtained from a global dataset of 8326 high-quality land-based observing stations with more than 30 years of record over the period from 1900 to 2009.
Observed heavy precipitation increase confirms theory and early model
E. M. Fischer,R. Knutti +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors use the intensification of heavy precipitation as a counterexample, where seemingly complex and potentially computationally intractable processes manifest themselves to first order in simple ways.
Robust spatially aggregated projections of climate extremes
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Recent changes in extreme floods across multiple continents
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors provide an assessment of changes in the largest flood events (similar to 0.033 annual exceedance probability) observed during the period 1980-2009 for 1744 catchments located in Australia, Brazil, Europe and the United States.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
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