TY - JOUR
T1 - Global climatology and trends in convective environments from ERA5 and rawinsonde data
AU - Taszarek, Mateusz
AU - Allen, John T.
AU - Marchio, Mattia
AU - Brooks, Harold E.
N1 - Funding Information:
M.T. acknowledges support from the Polish National Science Centre under Grant No. 2017/27/B/ST10/00297. J.T. Allen acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation under Grant No. AGS-1945286. M.M. acknowledges support from the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR) under grant “Dipartimenti di Eccellenza (2018-2022)”, awarded to the Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering of the University of Trento. The reanalysis and sounding computations were performed in the Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center (project number: 331). Additional funding was provided by the NOAA/Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research under NOAA University of Oklahoma Cooperative Agreement NA11OAR4320072, under the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).
PY - 2021/12
Y1 - 2021/12
N2 - Globally, thunderstorms are responsible for a significant fraction of rainfall, and in the mid-latitudes often produce extreme weather, including large hail, tornadoes and damaging winds. Despite this importance, how the global frequency of thunderstorms and their accompanying hazards has changed over the past 4 decades remains unclear. Large-scale diagnostics applied to global climate models have suggested that the frequency of thunderstorms and their intensity is likely to increase in the future. Here, we show that according to ERA5 convective available potential energy (CAPE) and convective precipitation (CP) have decreased over the tropics and subtropics with simultaneous increases in 0–6 km wind shear (BS06). Conversely, rawinsonde observations paint a different picture across the mid-latitudes with increasing CAPE and significant decreases to BS06. Differing trends and disagreement between ERA5 and rawinsondes observed over some regions suggest that results should be interpreted with caution, especially for CAPE and CP across tropics where uncertainty is the highest and reliable long-term rawinsonde observations are missing.
AB - Globally, thunderstorms are responsible for a significant fraction of rainfall, and in the mid-latitudes often produce extreme weather, including large hail, tornadoes and damaging winds. Despite this importance, how the global frequency of thunderstorms and their accompanying hazards has changed over the past 4 decades remains unclear. Large-scale diagnostics applied to global climate models have suggested that the frequency of thunderstorms and their intensity is likely to increase in the future. Here, we show that according to ERA5 convective available potential energy (CAPE) and convective precipitation (CP) have decreased over the tropics and subtropics with simultaneous increases in 0–6 km wind shear (BS06). Conversely, rawinsonde observations paint a different picture across the mid-latitudes with increasing CAPE and significant decreases to BS06. Differing trends and disagreement between ERA5 and rawinsondes observed over some regions suggest that results should be interpreted with caution, especially for CAPE and CP across tropics where uncertainty is the highest and reliable long-term rawinsonde observations are missing.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85107762593&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41612-021-00190-x
DO - 10.1038/s41612-021-00190-x
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85107762593
VL - 4
JO - npj Climate and Atmospheric Science
JF - npj Climate and Atmospheric Science
SN - 2397-3722
IS - 1
M1 - 35
ER -