Abstract
Anthropogenic climate change is leading to the intensification of extreme rainfall due to an increase in atmospheric water holding capacity at higher temperatures as governed by the Clausius-Clapeyron (C-C) relationship. However, the rainfall-temperature sensitivity (termed scaling) often deviates from the C-C relationship. This manuscript uses classifications prescribed by regional-scale atmospheric circulation patterns to investigate whether deviations from the C-C relationship in tropical Australia can be explained by differing weather types (WT). We show that the rainfall-temperature scaling differs depending on the WTs, with the difference increasing with rainfall magnitude. All monsoonal WTs have similar scaling, in excess of the C-C relationship, while trade winds (the driest WTs) result in the greatest scaling, up to twice that of the C-C relationship. Finally, we show the scaling for each WT also varies spatially, illustrating that both local factors and the WT will contribute to the behaviour of rainfall under warming.
Highlights
There is broad consensus within the scientific community on the presence of climate change and an anomalous rise in global average surface temperatures leading to more frequent atmospheric and marine heatwaves [1]
For the interested reader the mean daily rainfall and air temperature for each weather types (WT) are presented in figure S1, with fitted relationships presented in figure S3
This study investigated the rainfall-temperature scaling relationship for tropical Australia across discretised regional-scale atmospheric patterns known as WTs
Summary
There is broad consensus within the scientific community on the presence of climate change and an anomalous rise in global average surface temperatures leading to more frequent atmospheric and marine heatwaves [1]. Assuming invariant relative humidity and the absence of changes to large-scale (regional) circulation patterns, thermodynamic factors suggest a 7%/◦C increase in the maximum amount of low-level moisture in the atmosphere, and extreme precipitation, as governed by the Clausius-Clapeyron (C-C) relationship [16, 17]. This mechanism of moisture holding content increasing rainfall has been successfully represented in several weather and climate models [18–21], and is found to be consistent with historically observed temperature sensitivities, evidencing support of the C-C scaling relationship in projecting rainfall extremes [22–25]
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