Global
precipitation increase per degree of global warming at the end of the 21st
century may be about
40 percent smaller than what the models currently predict.
Photo courtesy of Haley Luna.
(December 10, 2015) Lawrence Livermore researchers and
collaborators have found that most climate models overestimate the increase in
global precipitation due to climate change.
Specifically, the team looked at 25 models and found they
underestimate the increase in absorption of sunlight by water vapor as the
atmosphere becomes moister, and therefore overestimate increases in global
precipitation.
The team found global precipitation increase per degree of
global warming at the end of the 21st century may be about 40 percent smaller
than what the models, on average, currently predict.
The research appears in the Dec. 10 edition of the journal
Nature.
Evaluation of model-predicted global precipitation change
with actual precipitation observations is difficult due to uncertainties
arising from many sources, including insufficient spatial and historical data
coverage. As an alternative approach, the team, made up of LLNL scientist Mark
Zelinka and colleagues from the University of California, Los Angeles,
including lead author Anthony DeAngelis, evaluated model-simulated global
precipitation change through consideration of the physical processes that
govern it.
The team found that the increase in global precipitation
simulated by models is strongly controlled by how much additional sunlight is
absorbed by water vapor as the planet warms: Models in which more sunlight is
absorbed by water vapor tend to have smaller increases in precipitation. They
demonstrated that model-to-model differences in increased absorption of
sunlight were not controlled by how much their humidity increased, but by how
much additional sunlight was trapped in the atmosphere for a given increase in
humidity. Conveniently, this quantity can be measured from space, allowing the
team to assess how well the models capture the physics controlling changes in
global precipitation.