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Future changes in rainy season characteristics over East China under continuous warming

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Abstract

The summer rainfall amount over East China is expected to increase along with a strengthening of the East Asian summer monsoon in a warmer climate. However, how the seasonality of precipitation will respond to global warming remains uncertain and is closely related to monsoon circulation. Here, we project future changes in multiple intra-seasonal rainfall characteristics over East China under 1.5 °C, 2 °C, 2.5 °C, and 3 °C of global warming above pre-industrial levels based on coupled model intercomparison project phase 6 multi-model projections. Both the onset and cessation dates over South China are likely to be delayed in a warmer climate, resulting in a later shift of the rainy season. In contrast, advanced cessation dates are projected over Northeast China with high model consensus. As for rainfall characteristics within the rainy season, total rainy season rainfall is expected to increase over the whole East China domain, with remarkable enhancement of heavy rainfall intensity. Further analysis indicates that continuous warming over a 1.5 °C warmer climate is projected to further increase total rainy season rainfall and enhance heavy rainfall intensity, with a magnitude at least twice as large with additional warming of 0.5 to 1.5 °C. Also, changes in cessation dates over South and Northeast China are projected to be enhanced significantly. These results together indicate the vital need to slow down global warming to reduce potential adverse impacts on agricultural and socioeconomic development.

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Data availability

The CMIP6 model simulations are available from https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/projects/cmip6/. The CPC Unified Gauge-based Analysis of Global Daily Precipitation was obtained from https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/cpc-unified-gauge-based-analysis-global-daily-precipitation.

Code availability

Figures in this study are constructed with the NCAR Command Language (http://www.ncl.ucar.edu/). All codes used in this study are available from the corresponding author.

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Funding

This work was supported jointly by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 42230605 and 42005026) and the Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center for Climate Change.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Monsoon System Research, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Jinling Piao, Shangfeng Chen & Xiaoqing Lan

  2. College of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Jinling Piao & Shangfeng Chen

  3. Yunnan Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disasters and Climate Resources in the Greater Mekong Subregion, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650091, China

    Wen Chen & Peng Hu

  4. Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650500, China

    Wen Chen & Peng Hu

  5. Low-Carbon and Climate Impact Research Centre, School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Jin-Soo Kim

  6. Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Wen Zhou

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  1. Jinling Piao
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Correspondence to Wen Chen.

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Piao, J., Chen, W., Kim, JS. et al. Future changes in rainy season characteristics over East China under continuous warming. Climatic Change 176, 120 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-023-03598-x

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