The Precipitation Response to Warming and CO2 Increase: A Comparison of a Global Storm Resolving Model and CMIP6 Models

Abstract

Abstract Global storm‐resolving models (GSRMs) that can explicitly resolve some of deep convection are now being integrated for climate timescales. GSRMs are able to simulate more realistic precipitation distributions relative to traditional Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6 (CMIP6) models. In this study, we present results from two‐year‐long integrations of a GSRM developed at Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, eXperimental System for High‐resolution prediction on Earth‐to‐Local Domains (X‐SHiELD), for the response of precipitation to sea surface temperature warming and an isolated increase in CO2 and compare it to CMIP6 models. At leading order, X‐SHiELD's response is within the range of the CMIP6 models. However, a close examination of the precipitation distribution response reveals that X‐SHiELD has a different response at lower percentiles and the response of the extreme events are at the lower end of the range of CMIP6 models. A regional decomposition reveals that the difference is most pronounced for midlatitude land, where X‐SHiELD shows a lower increase at intermediate percentiles and drying at lower percentiles.

Keywords

• cloud resolving models
• climate change
• precipitation