Does higher surface temperature intensify extreme precipitation?

Abstract

Recently, against the backdrop of current climate, several regional studies have investigated the applicability of the Clausius-Clapeyron relation to the scaling relationship between extreme precipitation intensity and surface air temperature. Nevertheless, the temperature relationship of the extreme precipitation intensity on a global scale is still unclear. We assess, for the first time, the global relationship between the extreme daily precipitation intensity and the daily surface air temperature using in-situ data. The extreme daily precipitation intensity increased monotonically with the daily surface air temperature at high latitudes and decreased monotonically in the tropics. Similarly, the extreme daily precipitation intensity at middle latitudes increased at low temperatures and decreased at high temperatures; this decrease could be largely attributed to the decrease in the wet-event duration. The Clausius-Clapeyron scaling is applicable to the increase in the extreme daily precipitation intensity in a limited number of regions. However, the potential applicability of the Clausius-Clapeyron scaling on sub-hourly timescale was observed, even in regions where the Clausius-Clapeyron scaling on daily timescale was not applicable. This implies the potential of warming to intensify extreme precipitation on sub-hourly timescales. Copyright 2011 by the American Geophysical Union.