A reconstructed total precipitation framework

Climate change is expected to alter the statistical properties of precipitation. There are two related but consequentially distinct theories for changes to precipitation that have received some consensus: (1) the time-and-space integrated global total precipitation should increase with longwave cooling as the surface warms, (2) the most intense precipitation rates should increase at a faster rate related to the increase in vapor saturation. Herein, these two expectations are combined with an analytic integration of three conceptually independent properties of the tropical hydrological cycle, the intensity, probability, and frequency of precipitation. The total precipitation in both a cloud-resolving model and tropical Global Precipitation Measurement mission data is decomposed and reconstructed with the analytic integral. By applying (1) and (2) to the precipitation characteristics from the model and observations to form a warming proxy model, it is suggested that a wide range of future distributions of precipitation intensity, probability, and frequency are possible. Climate change: A simpler model for predicting precipitation change Models predict climate change will alter precipitation patterns across Earth, but the full range of possible changes is unknown. Matthew Igel and Joseph Biello at the University of California Davis created a new simple method that incorporated intensity, probability, and frequency to determine all potential responses of precipitation to climate change. Assuming a global warming of 2 °C and a tropical climate, the authors found that many future deviations in precipitation patterns are possible, even including little change to precipitation probability. The intensity of weak rates of rain could increase significantly with climate warming. Incorporating climates from other regions, such as ocean basins, could lead to larger scale application of this model. Future studies can use this method to determine which physical mechanisms need further study, increasing the accuracy of future precipitation simulations.