On the Potentials and Limitations of Attributing a Small-Scale Climate Event

Dominic Matte*, Jens H. Christensen, Henrik Feddersen, Henrik Vedel, Niels Woetmann Nielsen, Rasmus A. Pedersen, Rune M. K. Zeitzen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalLetterResearchpeer-review

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Abstract

Intense convective storms can be hazardous when occurring over large populated cities. In a changing climate, decision makers and the general public increasingly need to be able to better understand if and to what extent these storms are influenced by anthropological climate change and what to expect as climate continues to warm. Unfortunately due to their limited ability to resolve small-scale features in models, convective storms remain a challenge to the modeling community. Here, we use a forecast-ensemble based method using a convection permitting model with full data-assimilation, to assess the risk of exceeding certain precipitation thresholds related to a critical cloudburst event that occurred over Copenhagen, Denmark. Our results show that this set-up is representing well the overall observed intensities. By adapting a pseudo-global warming approach, we show that both the risk for flooding and the risk for reaching unprecedented precipitation intensity increases resulting from further warming.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere2022GL099481
JournalGeophysical Research Letters
Volume49
Issue number16
Number of pages9
ISSN0094-8276
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 28 Aug 2022

Keywords

  • climate change
  • clouburst
  • attribution
  • pseudo-global warming
  • flash flood
  • PRECIPITATION
  • FORMULATION
  • ENSEMBLE
  • WEATHER
  • SCHEME
  • END

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