Extreme Convection vs. Extreme Rainfall: a Global View

There is concern that extreme weather events may become stronger, more frequent, or both as the climate changes. This paper seeks more clarity in defining different types of extreme storms, and the global distribution of each type.

Recent Findings

Detailed case studies of specific events over the United States are revealing but the only way to document such occurrences globally is by using radar profiles from the GPM core satellite. Recent results differ somewhat depending on specific definitions and approaches, but they are starting to converge.

Summary

We demonstrate the global distribution of the ~ 1000 most extreme events of each type over a 5-year period and find that in addition to testing for extreme rain rates and extremely intense convection, we must also differentiate by size. Large rain areas containing extreme rates are exclusively oceanic, small rain areas often have extreme rates over land. The most intense convective cores are almost exclusively over land, regardless of size.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by NASA Precipitation Measurement Mission grants NNX17AI99G and 80NSSC19K0673 under the direction of Dr. Gail Skofronick-Jackson. Thanks to the Precipitation Processing System (PPS) team at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, for data processing assistance.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Utah, 135 S. 1460 East, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112-0110, USA Edward J. Zipser
  2. Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi, TX, USA Chuntao Liu
  1. Edward J. Zipser