Exploring changes of precipitation extremes under climate change through global variable-resolution modeling

Abstract

Understanding the responses of precipitation extremes to global climate change remains limited owing to their poor representations in models and complicated interactions with multi-scale systems. Here we take the record-breaking precipitation over China in 2021 as an example, and study its changes under three different climate scenarios through a developed pseudo-global-warming (PGW) experimental framework with 60–3 km variable-resolution global ensemble modeling. Compared to the present climate, the precipitation extreme under a warmer (cooler) climate increased (decreased) in intensity, coverage, and total amount at a range of 24.3%–37.8% (18.7%–56.1%). With the help of the proposed PGW experimental framework, we further reveal the impacts of the multi-scale system interactions in climate change on the precipitation extreme. Under the warmer climate, large-scale water vapor transport converged from double typhoons and the subtropical high marched into central China, enhancing the convective energy and instability on the leading edge of the transport belt. As a result, the mesoscale convective system (MCS) that directly contributed to the precipitation extreme became stronger than that in the present climate. On the contrary, the cooler climate displayed opposite changing characteristics relative to the warmer climate, ranging from the large-scale systems to local environments and to the MCS. In summary, our study provides a promising approach to scientifically assess the response of precipitation extremes to climate change, making it feasible to perform ensemble simulations while investigating the multi-scale system interactions over the globe.