A global, continental, and regional analysis of changes in extreme precipitation

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dc.contributor.authorSun, Qiaohong
dc.contributor.authorZhang, Xuebin
dc.contributor.authorZwiers, Francis W.
dc.contributor.authorWestra, Seth
dc.contributor.authorAlexander, Lisa V.
dc.date.accessioned2025-04-10T20:27:24Z
dc.date.available2025-04-10T20:27:24Z
dc.date.issued2021
dc.description.abstractThis paper provides an updated analysis of observed changes in extreme precipitation using high-quality station data up to 2018. We examine changes in extreme precipitation represented by annual maxima of 1-day (Rx1day) and 5-day (Rx5day) precipitation accumulations at different spatial scales and attempt to address whether the signal in extreme precipitation has strengthened with several years of additional observations. Extreme precipitation has increased at about two-thirds of stations and the percentage of stations with significantly increasing trends is significantly larger than that can be expected by chance for the globe, continents including Asia, Europe, and North America, and regions including central North America, eastern North America, northern Central America, northern Europe, the Russian Far East, eastern central Asia, and East Asia. The percentage of stations with significantly decreasing trends is not different from that expected by chance. Fitting extreme precipitation to generalized extreme value distributions with global mean surface temperature (GMST) as a covariate reaffirms the statistically significant connections between extreme precipitation and temperature. The global median sensitivity, percentage change in extreme precipitation per 1 K increase in GMST is 6.6% (5.1% to 8.2%; 5%–95% confidence interval) for Rx1day and is slightly smaller at 5.7% (5.0% to 8.0%) for Rx5day. The comparison of results based on observations ending in 2018 with those from data ending in 2000–09 shows a consistent median rate of increase, but a larger percentage of stations with statistically significant increasing trends, indicating an increase in the detectability of extreme precipitation intensification, likely due to the use of longer records.
dc.description.reviewstatusReviewed
dc.description.scholarlevelFaculty
dc.description.sponsorshipThe study was supported by the Pan- Canadian Global Water Futures (GWF) research program. We acknowledge the European Climate Assessment Dataset project, the Southeast Asian Climate Assessment and Dataset project, the Latin American Climate Assessment and Dataset project, the National Climatic Data Center, the CCl/WCRP/ JCOMM Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI), the China Meteorological Administration, the Russian Met Service, and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology for providing observational data. LVA is funded by the Australian Research Council Grant CE170100023.
dc.identifier.citationSun, Q., Zhang, X., Zwiers, F. W., Westra, S., & Alexander, L. V. (2021). A global, continental, and regional analysis of changes in extreme precipitation. Journal of Climate, 34(1), 243–258. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0892.1
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0892.1
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1828/21760
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherJournal of Climate
dc.subjectUN SDG 13: Climate Action
dc.subject#journal article
dc.subjectPacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC)
dc.titleA global, continental, and regional analysis of changes in extreme precipitation
dc.typeArticle

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