501 / 2024-09-18 09:08:58

Linking weather and climate dynamics in extreme precipitation

extreme precipitation, climate change

From an atmospheric dynamist’s perspective, there is no essential difference between weather and climate dynamics. Global warming has induced significant shifts in weather characteristics, and there is a large demand for answering related questions from scientists, the public, and stakeholders. In this presentation, I will share our recent advances in understanding the climatic responses of extreme precipitation. By combining theory, idealized, and realistic simulations, we demonstrate that the regional distribution of extreme precipitation sensitivity can be largely explained by a traditional weather analysis of quasi-geostrophic diagnoses. We have developed a framework that separates and quantifies the roles of dry (large-scale adiabatic flows) and moist (small-scale convection) dynamics in shaping the regional patterns of extreme precipitation sensitivity. Diabatic heating feedback amplifies extreme precipitation in a nonlinear dependence on atmospheric moisture, leading to high sensitivity to climate change. This work demonstrates that linking weather and climate dynamics is a fruitful approach in exploring weather-climate coupled problems.