Intense precipitation events associated with landfalling tropical cyclones in a warmer climate

In this work the authors investigate possible changes in the intensity of rainfall events associated with tropical cyclones (TCs) under a warmer climate, with a special focus on landfalling storms. The availability of a new set of experiments designed within the U.S. CLIVAR Hurricane Working Group allows disentangling the role of changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide from the role played by sea surface temperature in changing the amount of precipitation associated with TCs in a warmer world. Compared to the present day climate, we found an increase in TC associated precipitation under the scenarios involving sea surface temperature increase. On the other hand, in a CO2 doubling only scenario, the changes in TC rainfall are small and we found that, on average, TC rainfall tends to decrease compared to the present day climate. The results of this study highlight the contribution of landfalling TCs to the projected increase in the precipitation changes affecting the tropical coastal regions.