Consistent large-scale response of hourly extreme precipitation to
temperature variation
Abstract
Hourly precipitation extremes can intensify with temperature at higher
rates than expected from thermodynamic increases explained by the
Clausius-Clapeyron (CC) relationship (~6.5%/K), but
local scaling with surface air temperature is highly variable. Here we
use daily dewpoint temperature, a direct proxy of absolute humidity, to
estimate at-gauge local scaling across six macro-regions for a global
dataset of over 7000 hourly precipitation gauges. We find scaling rates
from CC to 2xCC at more than 60% of gauges, peaking in the tropics at a
median rate of ~1.5CC. Moreover, regional scaling rates
show surprisingly universal behaviour at around CC, with higher scaling
in Europe. Importantly for impacts, hourly scaling is persistently
higher than scaling for daily extreme precipitation. Our results
indicate greater consistency in global scaling than previous work,
usually at or above CC, with positive scaling in the (sub)tropics. This
demonstrates the relevance of dewpoint temperature scaling to
understanding future changes.