Temporal and spatial aggregation of rainfall extremes over India under anthropogenic warming

Abstract

Abstract India experienced several unprecedented floods in the recent decades. The increase in the extreme rainfall events (EREs) is the primary cause for these floods, manifesting its societal impacts. The daily downscaled and bias corrected (DBC) Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) rainfall and sea surface temperature (SST) are prepared for the Indian region and are utilized to examine the characteristics of EREs. The DBC products capture the characteristic features of EREs for the baseline period, which inspired us to assess the EREs over India in CMIP6 future projections. Consistent with the observations, DBC product shows ~ 8% of Indian land found to experienced extremely heavy rainfall associated with the long duration EREs in the baseline period. However, area and extreme rainfall thresholds are projected to increase by about 18(13)% and 58(50)%, respectively in the far future under SSP5-8.5 (SSP2-4.5) emission scenario relative to the baseline period. A two-fold-65(62)% increase in long-duration EREs compared to the short-duration EREs and substantial warming ~ 2.4(2.9) oC of Indian Ocean SSTs in the far future under SSP5-8.5 (SSP2-4.5) emission scenario compared to baseline period are reported. These findings may provide fundamental insights to formulate national climate change adaptation policies for the EREs.