[ESAC Student Seminar] Lexia Cicone

“A mechanistic understanding of the seasonality of northern midlatitude precipitation extremes”

Previous work investigating the response of extratropical Northern Hemisphere precipitation extremes to climate change identified a seasonal relationship between relative humidity and the dynamic contribution to changes in precipitation extremes. One control on the relative humidity is the plant physiological response to CO2. Here, we further investigate the relationship between the decreased relative humidity and the negative dynamic contribution using CMIP6 model simulations, and we try to better understand the underlying mechanism. The piSST, piSST-4xCO2 , and piSST-4xCO2-rad experiments allow us to leverage the plant physiological response to CO2 to test our hypothesis that a decrease in relative humidity causes the negative dynamic contribution. Isolating the changes in the dynamic component and relative humidity using the plant physiological effect demonstrates a clear causal relationship in which a decrease in relative humidity produces a negative dynamic contribution in JJA but not in DJF, in agreement with previous work. In order to understand the mechanism, changes in vertical profiles of temperature and vertical velocity are analyzed.

ESAC Student Seminar Series

A forum for students and postdocs to share recent research, hone presentation skills, and build community among peers, sponsored by the EAPS Student Advisory Committee. Open to current EAPS graduate and undergraduate students and postdocs. Typically hosted on Thursdays during the semester, including pizza lunch.

Contact: esac.officers@gmail.com