Science Source
Attributing intensification of precipitation extremes to human influence
- Provides estimates of the human contribution to the observed widespread intensification of precipitation extremes
- Considers the annual maxima of daily (RX1day) and 5 day consecutive (RX5day) precipitation amounts over the Northern Hemisphere land area for 1951–2005
- Compares observed changes with expected responses to external forcings as simulated by multiple coupled climate models participating in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5
- Detects the effect of anthropogenic forcings in extreme precipitation observations, both individually and when simultaneously estimating anthropogenic and naturally forced changes
- Finds that the effect of natural forcings is not detectable
- Estimates that human influence has intensified annual maximum 1 day precipitation in sampled Northern Hemisphere locations by 3.3% [1.1% to 5.8%, >90% confidence interval] on average
- Concludes that this corresponds to an average intensification in RX1day of 5.2% [1.3%, 9.3%] per degree increase in observed global mean surface temperature consistent with the Clausius‐Clapeyron relationship
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