Computer hardware

Climatology

Precipitation

Relative humidity

Cyclone (programming language)

Typhoon

Computer science

Geology

Oceanography

Global warming

Climate change

Geography

Tropical cyclone rainfall forecasting

Environmental science

Storm

Tropical cyclogenesis

Meteorology

Atmospheric sciences

Field-programmable gate array

Tropical cyclone

npj Climate and Atmospheric Science

Recent climate modeling studies point to an increase in tropical cyclone rainfall rates in response to climate warming. These studies indicate that the percentage increase in tropical cyclone rainfall rates often outpaces the increase in saturation specific humidity expected from the Clausius-Clapeyron relation (~7% °C −1 ). We explore the change in tropical cyclone rainfall rates over all oceans under global warming using a high-resolution climate model with the ability to simulate the entire intensity spectrum of tropical cyclones. Consistent with previous results, we find a robust increase of tropical cyclone rainfall rates. The percentage increase for inner-core tropical cyclone rainfall rates in our model is markedly larger than the Clausius-Clapeyron rate. However, when the impact of storm intensity is excluded, the rainfall rate increase shows a much better match with the Clausius-Clapeyron rate, suggesting that the “super Clausius-Clapeyron” scaling of rainfall rates with temperature increase is due to the warming-induced increase of tropical cyclone intensity. The increase of tropical cyclone intensity and environmental water vapor, in combination, explain the tropical cyclone rainfall rate increase under global warming.

Causes of large projected increases in hurricane precipitation rates with global warming