Detection and attribution of human influence on regional precipitation

Beena Balan Sarojini (), Peter A. Stott and Emily Black
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Beena Balan Sarojini: National Centre for Atmospheric Science — Climate Directorate
Peter A. Stott: Met Office Hadley Centre
Emily Black: National Centre for Atmospheric Science — Climate Directorate

Nature Climate Change, 2016, vol. 6, issue 7, 669-675

Abstract: Abstract Understanding how human influence on the climate is affecting precipitation around the world is immensely important for defining mitigation policies, and for adaptation planning. Yet despite increasing evidence for the influence of climate change on global patterns of precipitation, and expectations that significant changes in regional precipitation should have already occurred as a result of human influence on climate, compelling evidence of anthropogenic fingerprints on regional precipitation is obscured by observational and modelling uncertainties; and by using current methods, it is likely to remain so for years to come. This is in spite of substantial ongoing improvements in models, new reanalyses and a satellite record that spans over thirty years. If we are to quantify how human-induced climate change is affecting the regional water cycle, we need to consider new ways of identifying the effects of natural and anthropogenic influences on precipitation that take full advantage of our physical expectations.

Date: 2016
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DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2976

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