Western United States wintertime precipitation response to warming: an
assessment in a global storm-resolving model
- Tsung-Lin Hsieh,
- Lucas Harris,
- Kai-Yuan Cheng,
- Linjiong Zhou,
- Liwei Jia,
- Ming Zhao
Linjiong Zhou
Cooperative Institute for Modeling Earth Systems, and Program on Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Princeton University
Author ProfileAbstract
Years-long global storm-resolving simulations of the present and warmed
climates are conducted with 3.25km horizontal grid spacing. We focus on
wintertime precipitation in the coastal western United States, a notably
water-sensitive region with complex topography. The model generates more
realistic orographic precipitation compared with a coarser-resolution
model having the same dynamical core. In response to uniform sea surface
warming, the increase in extreme precipitation rates together with the
better resolved orographic precipitation lead to persistence of snowpack
in parts of the coastal western United States. In contrast, snowpack in
the coarser-resolution model is largely eliminated in the warmed
climate. Whether snowpack persists influences the regional surface
energy budget due to the snow-albedo feedback. The results highlight the
importance of resolving orographic precipitation and the large-scale
circulation response to warming in a consistent framework.06 May 2024Submitted to ESS Open Archive 10 May 2024Published in ESS Open Archive