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Climatological changes in rainfall distributions at different rain-rates under Qinghai-Tibet Plateau warming during 1981–2060

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Abstract

Climatological changes in rainfall affect the Tibetan Plateau’s eco-hydrological processes and water resource regimes. To better understand these changes, we examined the historical and future changes in rain amount distribution (RAD) and rain frequency distribution (RFD) under Tibetan Plateau warming. Daily rain accumulation from two observed datasets (Climate Prediction Center and Climate Forecast System Reanalysis) and CMIP6 models under SSP126, SSP245, and SSP585 scenarios are used to estimate RAD and RFD at each grid point. To capture the full range of rainfall from light to heavy, we used logarithmically distributed rain-rate bins, whose coordinates enable mathematical operations. This means that each rain-rate bin is a percentage wider in log coordinates than the previous one, with the same bin center. Results showed that RAD magnitudes varied from 0.74 to 0.93 mm/day at moderate rain-rates, with the broadest and narrowest curves occurring in 2011–2020 and 1991–2000, respectively. These distributions changed strongly from moderate to heavier rain-rates at 2.8 mm/day/K. Furthermore, RFD magnitudes ranged from 13.03% (1991–2000) to 13.51% (2011–2020), with a negative response at light rain-rates (− 10.33%/K) and a positive response at moderate rain-rates (10%/K). Under future warming, RAD magnitudes were around 0.42 mm/day for the SSPs at moderate rain-rates, which shifted to heavier rain-rates, implying that the RAD curve will become larger with more rain at heavier rain-rates. Besides RAD whose response was around 2.85%/K under SSP126 at light rain-rate, most SSP126 responses were negative at light rain-rate but shifted positively and increased with SSP245 and SSP585 at heavier rain-rates. Overall, the rain distributions are moderately skewed and platykurtic, producing fewer and less extreme outliers than the normal distribution. Notably, there was no significant mean difference between the distributions; however, the change responses showed statistical differences (p < 0.05). This study will raise awareness of unexpected future events by showing how rain distribution changes with global warming.

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Data availability

Datasets analyzed in this study are available from the following public domain resources: the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) for providing Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) datasets (http://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds093.0/) and the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSL, Boulder, Colorado, USA, for providing the CPC Global Unified Precipitation datasets (https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.cpc.globalprecip.html). Future daily precipitation and maximum and minimum temperatures datasets were also obtained from CMIP6-GCMs at https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/search/cmip6/. The data generated in this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The code used in this research may be available on request to the corresponding author.

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Funding

This study was jointly supported by the Major Science and Technology Project of Qinghai Province (2021-SF-A6), the National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFC0403600, 2016YFE0201900), National Natural Science Foundation of China (91847302, 42150410382), Research Fund Program of State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering (2022-KY-04), and National foreign experts project of China (WGXZ2022109L).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Department of Hydraulic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 10086, China

    Olusola O. Ayantobo, Jiahua Wei, Yang Shi & Guangqian Wang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Plateau Ecology and Agriculture, School of Water Resources and Electric Power, and the Laboratory of Ecological Protection and High-Quality Development in the Upper Yellow River, Qinghai University, Xining, 810016, China

    Jiahua Wei & Guangqian Wang

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  1. Olusola O. Ayantobo
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Contributions

All the authors contributed to the study. OOA: conceptualization, investigation, methodology, software, formal analysis, writing — original draft, writing — review and editing. JW: conceptualization, investigation, methodology, writing — review and editing, project administration, funding acquisition. YS: writing — review and editing. GW: project administration, funding acquisition, writing — review and editing. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jiahua Wei.

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Ayantobo, O.O., Wei, J., Shi, Y. et al. Climatological changes in rainfall distributions at different rain-rates under Qinghai-Tibet Plateau warming during 1981–2060. Theor Appl Climatol 152, 663–679 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-023-04383-7

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