Few quantities are of greater importance in climate projections than regional precipitation. This talk will use a hierarchy of climate model simulations to examine key processes that control changes in regional precipitation in response to anthropogenic forcing. While rainfall projections are often highly uncertain, this talk will highlight simple processes that are robust across models and responsible for most changes in regional precipitation over land. Other more complicated processes, involving atmosphere-ocean coupling or local dynamical feedbacks, which are important for natural climate variability are shown to be largely insignificant for anthropogenic climate change. Recommendations for improving model projections of regional precipitation change will also be presented.
06.11.2014
15:15 Uhr