Investigating the Influence of Climate Change on Extreme Precipitation Associated with Recent US Hurricanes

Gaining insights into the impact of the climate crisis on the occurrence of intense downpours associated with hurricanes are essential for building climate resilient communities. Here we investigate changes in the intensity of tropical cyclone (TC)-related precipitation, taking into account future warming signals. In particular, we utilize a Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model reanalysis that dynamically downscaled European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis version 5 (ERA5) spanning 40 years (1980-2019) on a 12 km grid with 3 hourly output. Future projections are produced by thermodynamically modifying the WRF reanalysis with warming signals derived from shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP585 and SSP245) for 40 years simulations from 2020-2059 and 2060-2099. Ground observations from Global Historical Climatology Network (1950-2015) are used to build return periods for precipitation from TC events. Integrating ground observations and dynamically downscaled models (modified by thermodynamic components) into a statistical framework allows for the characterization of heavy rains from TCs in plausible future scenarios. Preliminary findings suggest that extreme rain rates from hurricane Ida (2021) are expected to be approximately 2-11 times more likely at the end of the century as expected by high-sensitive models. This work underscores the effectiveness of utilizing atmospheric models to build storylines of recent major Atlantic hurricanes, while considering thermodynamic changes in the distant future (2059-2099), as a viable approach for understanding changing characteristics of extreme weather events.