Projections of Extreme Precipitation Events in India from regional and global climate model

Abstract:

Extreme precipitation events pose tremendous challenges for humans and infrastructure. Precipitation extremes are projected to increase under the future climate. We examined changes in extreme precipitation events under the projected future climate in India from regional and global climate models. We obtained CMIP5 projections for 32 general circulation models (GCMs), while data for regional climate models (RCMs) were obtained from the CORDEX South Asia program. The data were analyzed for the historic (1971-1999) and projected future climate (2006-2060) for annual maximum precipitation, frequency of extreme precipitation events, mean intensity of top five precipitation events, and ratio of heavy to non-heavy precipitation. Out of the 32 GCMs, we selected the four best GCMs (BEST-GCMs) that performed better for extreme precipitation events in India. Moreover, we selected the host GCMs (HOST-GCMs) that were used as a boundary condition for the CORDEX-RCMs. We finally compared projections of extreme precipitation events from the BEST-GCMs, HOST-GCMs, and CORDEX-RCMs under the future climate. We find that the CORDEX-RCMs show a large inter-model variation leading to a high uncertainty in projections. Overall, most of the models indicate increases in extreme precipitation events under the projected future climate predominantly in the Southern peninsula.