Precipitation Extremes, Snowfall, and Convective Storms in a Warming Climate

Date: 1/21/16

Precipitation Extremes, Snowfall, and Convective Storms in a Warming Climate

Speaker: Paul O’Gorman, Associate Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This is the second seminar in the series presented by the Initiative on Extreme Weather and Climate at Columbia University.

Recent global analyses of historical rain gauge records show an overall intensification of precipitation extremes that confirms what climate-model simulations suggested more than two decades ago. However, certain classes of precipitation extremes remain less well understood, including snowfall events and extreme convective precipitation extremes (i.e., thunderstorms producing very heavy rain).

This talk first provides an overview of the physical basis for the intensification of precipitation extremes with warming. The speaker then discusses recent research on projected changes in daily snowfall extremes and the role of an optimal temperature for snowfall, that is, a temperature at which global warming or cooling reduces snowfall amounts. Lastly, he discusses whether the energy available to convective storms increases as the atmosphere warms.