The South-Central U.S. Flood of May 2010: Present and Future*

Abstract

Abstract Previous studies have documented a feedback mechanism involving the cyclonic low-level jet (LLJ), poleward moisture flux and flux convergence, and condensational heating. Increased water vapor content and potentially heavier precipitation accompanying climate warming suggest the hypothesis that this feedback could strengthen with warming, contributing to amplification of precipitation extremes beyond what the thermodynamically controlled vapor increase would provide. Here, this hypothesis is tested with numerical simulations of a severe flooding event that took place in early May 2010 in the south-central United States. Control simulations with a mesoscale model capture the main features of the May 2010 flooding event. A pseudo–global warming approach is used to modify the current initial, surface, and boundary conditions by applying thermodynamic changes projected by an ensemble of GCMs for the A2 emission scenario. The observed synoptic pattern of the flooding event is replicated but with modified future thermodynamics, allowing isolation of thermodynamic changes on the moisture feedback. This comparison does not indicate a strengthening of the LLJ in the future simulation. Analysis of the lower-tropospheric potential vorticity evolution reveals that the southern portion of the LLJ over the Gulf of Mexico in this event was strengthened through processes involving the terrain of the Mexican Plateau; this aspect is largely insensitive to climate change. Despite the lack of LLJ strengthening, precipitation in the future simulation increased at a super Clausius–Clapeyron rate because of strengthened convective updrafts.