Temperature Dependence of Hourly, Daily, and Event-based Precipitation Extremes Over China

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 8; no. 1; pp. 17564 - 10
• Main Authors: Gao, Xichao, Zhu, Qian, Yang, Zhiyong, Liu, Jiahong, Wang, Hao, Shao, Weiwei, Huang, Guoru
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 03-12-2018; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 704/106/242; 704/106/35/823; 704/242; Atmospheric temperature; Humanities and Social Sciences; multidisciplinary; Precipitation; Rain; Rainfall intensity; Scaling; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Temperature effects; China; Gradual Rate; Peak Temperature Point; Hourly Precipitation Extremes; Peak Structure; Severe Cold Region
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-35405-4

Theoretically, precipitation extremes will increase at a rate of 6–7% with temperature increasing, namely the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship. However, many gauge observations suggest a peak structure of the relationship between precipitation extremes and atmospheric temperature, deviating from the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship. In this study, a comprehensive investigation about the temperature dependence of precipitation extremes (hourly, daily, and event-based) across China is implemented. The results confirm the widespread existence of the peak structure for daily and hourly precipitation extremes and show that (1) there is a generally positive spatial correlation between the precipitation extremes at the peak and temperature at the peak, and this scaling rate is close to the C-C rate; (2) the scaling of event-based extremes for precipitation amount with temperature follows a similar pattern to the daily precipitation extremes while the event-based precipitation intensity does not show a peak structure; (3) the decrease of rain duration is the main cause for the peak structure of the rain amount scaling.