National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Abstract:
Some of the most consequential outcomes of global warming for societies and ecosystems are changes in extreme events. Comparing 2000-2019 with 1980-1999, extreme temperature and flood events have more than doubled globally while the number of disastrous storms and droughts has increased by 30-50%. While the nonlinear increase in latent energy with warmer surface air temperature may explain the global increasing trends in weather extremes, credible projections of the regional changes in extreme events and changes in different types of extreme events remain challenging, partly because of model limitations in simulating the extreme events. In this seminar, I will discuss some recent advances in modeling extreme events and their future changes using a hierarchy of models spanning simple conceptual models to computationally intensive global storm-resolving models. Examples including modeling of mesoscale convective systems, atmospheric rivers, and hurricanes will be highlighted.