Abstract
The hydrological cycle is expected to intensify with global warming, which likely increases the intensity of extreme precipitation events and the risk of flooding. The changes, however, often differ from the theorized expectation of increases in water‐holding capacity of the atmosphere in the warmer conditions, especially when water availability is limited. Here, the relationships of changes in extreme precipitation and flood intensities for the end of the twenty-first century with spatial and seasonal water availability are quantified. Results show an intensification of extreme precipitation and flood events over all climate regions which increases as water availability increases from dry to wet regions. Similarly, there is an increase in the intensification of extreme precipitation and flood with the seasonal cycle of water availability. The connection between extreme precipitation and flood intensity changes and spatial and seasonal water availability becomes stronger as events become less extreme.
Highlights
The hydrological cycle is expected to intensify with global warming, which likely increases the intensity of extreme precipitation events and the risk of flooding
As rarer precipitation events are expected to be more influenced by climate c hange[7,16,17] and scale with vertical moisture transport rather than horizontal moisture a dvection[6], it remains unresolved whether the relationships between extreme precipitation changes and water availability can be detectable for rare flood-producing precipitation events
Based on the ensemble median of the CMIP5 global climate models (GCMs), water-limited regions are mainly located in North
Summary
The hydrological cycle is expected to intensify with global warming, which likely increases the intensity of extreme precipitation events and the risk of flooding. Extreme precipitation is expected to intensify with global warming over large parts of the globe as the concentration of atmospheric water vapour which supplies the water for precipitation increases in proportion to the saturation concentrations at a rate of about 6–7% per degree rise in temperature according to the thermodynamic Clausius–Clapeyron relationship[1,2,3]. Using gridded observations in Europe, a positive scaling rate of extreme precipitation with temperature in winter and a negative one in summer has been r eported[18] This raises the question of whether extreme precipitation changes have any relation with the seasonal cycle of water availability in a similar fashion as regional water availability. Globalscale flood assessments have reported both decreases and increases in future floods under global warming[22,23,24,25], albeit by using varying hydrological and climate models, scenarios, bias-correction methods and flood indicators
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