资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

The future increase in extreme precipitation is likely to have a severe impact on society due to flooding. Previous research has shown the improved representation of precipitation in convection-permitting models (CPMs), but until now it has not been possible to quantify uncertainties in future changes at convective (<5 km) scales. Here we analyze the first-ever ensemble of convection-permitting climate projections run within the UK Climate Projections project. We find that the CPM ensemble shows a significantly stronger intensification of summer hourly precipitation compared to the driving 12 km ensemble, with increases above the Clausius-Clapeyron relation and natural variability dominating the ensemble spread for extremes. Results suggest that the climate change signal across different CPMs may converge thanks to the more realistic representation of the local storm dynamics. We conclude that CPMs offer the promise of reducing uncertainties for extreme summer precipitation projections due to the better and explicit representation of convection.