Fast and slow precipitation responses to individual climate forcers: a PDRMIP multi-model study

Samset, B. H., Myhre, G., Forster, P. M., Hodnebrog, Ø., Andrews, T., Faluvegi, G., Fläschner, D., Kasoar, M., Kharin, V., Kirkevåg, A., Lamarque, J.-F., Olivié, D., Richardson, T., Shindell, D., Shine, K. P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2672-9978, Takemura, T. and Voulgarakis, A. (2016) Fast and slow precipitation responses to individual climate forcers: a PDRMIP multi-model study. Geophysical Research Letters, 43 (6). pp. 2782-2791. ISSN 0094-8276 doi: 10.1002/2016GL068064

Abstract/Summary

Precipitation is expected to respond differently to various drivers of anthropogenic climate change. We present the first results from the Precipitation Driver and Response Model Intercomparison Project (PDRMIP), where nine global climate models have perturbed CO2, CH4, black carbon, sulfate, and solar insolation. We divide the resulting changes to global mean and regional precipitation into fast responses that scale with changes in atmospheric absorption and slow responses scaling with surface temperature change. While the overall features are broadly similar between models, we find significant regional intermodel variability, especially over land. Black carbon stands out as a component that may cause significant model diversity in predicted precipitation change. Processes linked to atmospheric absorption are less consistently modeled than those linked to top-of-atmosphere radiative forcing. We identify a number of land regions where the model ensemble consistently predicts that fast precipitation responses to climate perturbations dominate over the slow, temperature-driven responses.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/63242
Identification Number/DOI	10.1002/2016GL068064
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	American Geophysical Union
Publisher Statement	Green Open Access: AGU allows final articles to be placed in an institutional repository 6 months after publication, and allows submitted articles to be accessible on the author’s personal website.
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