Projections of global changes in precipitation extremes from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 models

Abstract

Precipitation extremes are expected to increase in a warming climate; thus, it is essential to characterize their potential future changes. Here we evaluate eight high-resolution global climate model simulations in the twentieth century and provide new evidence on projected global precipitation extremes for the 21st century. A significant intensification of daily extremes for all seasons is projected for the middle and high latitudes of both hemispheres at the end of the present century. For the subtropics and tropics, the lack of reliable and consistent estimations found for both the historical and future simulations might be connected with model deficiencies in the representation of organized convective systems. Low intermodel variability and good agreement with high-resolution regional observations are found for the twentieth century winter over the Northern Hemisphere middle and high latitudes.