Exploring changes of precipitation extremes under climate change through global variable-resolution modeling.

Understanding the responses of precipitation extremes to global climate change remains limited owing to their poor representations in models and complicated interactions with multi-scale systems. Here we take the record-breaking precipitation over China in 2021 as an example, and study its changes under three different climate scenarios through a developed pseudo-global-warming (PGW) experimental framework with 60-3 km variable-resolution global ensemble modeling. Compared to the present climate, the precipitation extreme under a warmer (cooler) climate increased (decreased) in intensity, coverage, and total amount at a range of 24.3%-37.8% (18.7%-56.1%). With the help of the proposed PGW experimental framework, we further reveal the impacts of the multi-scale system interactions in climate change on the precipitation extreme. Under the warmer climate, large-scale water vapor transport converged from double typhoons and the subtropical high marched into central China, enhancing the convective energy and instability on the leading edge of the transport belt. As a result, the mesoscale convective system (MCS) that directly contributed to the precipitation extreme became stronger than that in the present climate. On the contrary, the cooler climate displayed opposite changing characteristics relative to the warmer climate, ranging from the large-scale systems to local environments and to the MCS. In summary, our study provides a promising approach to scientifically assess the response of precipitation extremes to climate change, making it feasible to perform ensemble simulations while investigating the multi-scale system interactions over the globe.

Recent Reversal of the Upper-Tropospheric Temperature Trend and its Role in Intensifying the East Asian Summer Monsoon.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the July and August (JA) mean upper-tropospheric temperature over East Asia shows a significant increasing trend, contrary to the decreasing trend in the late 1970 s. The largest warming center is over northern China (between 30°N-45°N and 85°E-120°E) around 300 hPa. Together with the temperature rising, the geo-potential height rises above the warming center and drops below, which connects closely to a correspondingly significant decadal shift of the general circulation over East Asia. In the upper-level of the troposphere, an anomalous anti-cyclone dominates, and the 200-hPa westerly jet strengthens due to the increasing pole-ward geo-potential height gradient. In the lower-troposphere, the anomalous southerly wind increases around Yangtze River Valley and the East Asian summer monsoon intensifies. The integrated circulation changes seriously impact summer precipitation over East Asia. The so-called "southern flood and northern drought" (SFND) pattern since the 1970 s over eastern China has changed. As the cooling center in the 1970 s moves southward, the dry belt moves southward as well. A wet belt dominates the Huaihe River Valley after the temperature trend reversal at 2005 while southern China experiences a dry condition.