Climate variability and changes in precipitation extremes and characteristics

Abstract

Climate variability and change are expected to bring several changes to hydrologic cycles and regimes in different parts of the world. Natural climate variability based on large-scale, global inter-year, quasi-decadal and decadal, and multidecadal-coupled oceanic-atmospheric oscillations (e.g., El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD)) contribute to regional variations in extremes and characteristics of essential climatic variables (e.g., temperature, precipitation, etc.) in different parts of the globe. These oscillations defined based on climate anomalies that are related to each other at large distances (referred to as teleconnections) are known to impact regional and global climate. Linkages of these teleconnections to the variability in regional precipitation patterns have been well documented in several research studies. This chapter focuses on evaluation of climate variability influences on precipitation extremes and characteristics. Several indices and metrics are discussed for such evaluation, and a few results from case studies are presented.