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Climate change attribution of the 2021 Henan extreme precipitation: Impacts of convective organization

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Abstract

In this study, we investigate the climate attribution of the 21·7 Henan extreme precipitation event. A conditional storyline attribution method is used, based on simulations of the event with a small-domain high-resolution cloud-resolving model. Large-scale vertical motion is determined by an interactive representation of large-scale dynamics based on the quasi-geostrophic omega equation, with dynamical forcing terms taken from observation-based reanalysis data. It is found that warming may lead to significant intensification of both regional-scale (10–14% K−1, depending on convective organization) and station-scale precipitation extremes (7–9% K−1). By comparing clustered convection organized by a localized surface temperature anomaly and squall-line convection organized by vertical wind shear, we further explored how convective organization may modify precipitation extremes and their responses to warming. It is found that shear convective organization is much more sensitive to large-scale dynamic forcing and results in much higher precipitation extremes at both regional and station scales than unorganized convection is. The clustered convection increases station-scale precipitation only slightly during heavy precipitation events. For regional-scale extreme precipitation sensitivity, shear-organized convection has a larger sensitivity by 2–3% K−1 than that of unorganized convection, over a wide temperature range, due to its stronger diabatic heating feedback. For the station-scale extreme precipitation sensitivity, no systemic dependence on convective organization is found in our simulations.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 42075146 & 41875050). AHS acknowledges the support from U.S. National Science Foundation (Grant No. AGS-1933523).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory for Climate and Ocean-Atmosphere Studies, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Han Qin, Zhiyong Meng & Ji Nie

  2. Aviation Meteorological Center, Civil Aviation Administration of China, Beijing, 100621, China

    Wei Yuan

  3. Key Laboratory of Regional Climate-Environment for Temperate East Asia (RCE-TEA), Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Jun Wang

  4. State Key Laboratory of Severe Weather, Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China

    Yang Chen

  5. Department of Atmospheric Science, School of Earth Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Panxi Dai

  6. Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10027, USA

    Adam H. Sobel

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  1. Han Qin
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  2. Wei Yuan
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  3. Jun Wang
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  4. Yang Chen
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  5. Panxi Dai
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  6. Adam H. Sobel
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  7. Zhiyong Meng
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  8. Ji Nie
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Correspondence to Ji Nie.

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Qin, H., Yuan, W., Wang, J. et al. Climate change attribution of the 2021 Henan extreme precipitation: Impacts of convective organization. Sci. China Earth Sci. 65, 1837–1846 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-022-9953-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-022-9953-0

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