Precipitation extremes projected to increase and to occur in different times of the year

Abstract

There is high confidence that precipitation extremes are projected to become more frequent and severe and, to a lesser extent, that their seasonality may change. However, these precipitation characteristics are dealt with separately, without examining whether magnitude and seasonality are jointly projected to change. Here we assess how the seasonality and magnitude of precipitation extremes are jointly projected to change for different climate scenarios. We perform analyses at the global scale using nine global climate models and four different emission scenarios. We identify large areas of the globe where the magnitude of the extremes is expected to increase as the emissions increase; at the same time, large changes in the seasonality of these extremes are projected to impact regions mainly located in the tropical and sub-tropical areas. These changes could impact our response and mitigation efforts and our resilience against such phenomena in response to climate change.