Abstract
Extreme precipitation events exhibit an increasing trend for both the frequency and magnitude on global and regional scales and it has already proven the impact of man-made global warming on the extreme precipitation amplification. Based on the observed datasets and global climate model (GCM) output, this study has evaluated the impact from anthropogenic forcing on the trend and temporal non-uniformity (i.e. increase in unevenness or disparity) of the precipitation amounts (PRCPTOT), extremes (R95p and RX5day) and intensity (SDII) in Central Asia (CA) from 1961 to 2005. Results indicate that radiative forcing changes, mainly driven by human activities, have significantly augmented the extreme precipitation indices in CA. The median trend with the influence of anthropogenic activities for the PRCPTOT, SDII, R95p and RX5day amounted to 2.19 mm/decade, 0.019 mm/decade, 1.39 mm/decade and 0.21 mm/decade during the study period, respectively. A statistically insignificant decrease in non-uniformity was noticed for the PRCPTOT, SDII and RX5day in Central CA (CCA) and Western CA (WCA), while Eastern CA (ECA) was the only region with a statistically significant increase in non-uniformity of the PRCPTOT, SDII, R95p and RX5day by 4.22%, 3.98%, 3.73% and 3.97%, respectively from 1961 to 2005 due to anthropogenic forcing. These results reflect the difference in various regions regarding the impact of anthropogenic forcing on the non-uniformity of extreme precipitation events in CA, which might help to fully understand the role of anthropogenic forcing in the changes of the precipitation extremes in CA and contribute to the development of water resource management strategies.
Highlights
Extreme precipitation events have a striking impact on the natural environment and society and were put under tremendous attention due to their significant damage on the ecosystems, fatalities and economic losses
Because of the fact that the simple daily intensity index (SDII), R95p and RX5day have no value in many locations in Central Asia (CA), we only carried out the evaluation for the RCPTOT from 1961 to 2005
Based on the CMIP5 ALL and NAT simulations, we have evaluated the impact from anthropogenic forcing on the trend and non-uniformity of the precipitation amounts (PRCPTOT), intensity (SDII) and extremes (R95p and RX5day) in CA
Summary
Extreme precipitation events have a striking impact on the natural environment and society and were put under tremendous attention due to their significant damage on the ecosystems, fatalities and economic losses. Many efforts have been made to evaluate the precipitation variability on different scales in CA, based on the sparse gauge precipitation data, GCM simulations and fusion remote sensing data which indicate an overall rise in the spatial diversity and heterogeneity of the precipitation extremes during past d ecades[24,25,26,27,28,29] and future p eriods[30,31] For these changing patterns, some authors have investigated the possible influence from humidity, the atmospheric circulation and other natural factors more s pecifically[27,32]. This study aims to (1) examine the spatial–temporal variation including the trend in historical precipitation, (2) investigate the human contribution to potential changes in precipitation non-uniformity, and (3) discuss potential influencing factors in the temporal precipitation variability of CA
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