Data from: Climate change intensification of horizontal water vapor transport in CMIP5

Abstract: Global warming of the Earth's atmosphere is hypothesized to lead to an intensification of the global water cycle. To determine associated hydrological changes, most previous research has used precipitation. This study, however, investigates projected changes to global atmospheric wate...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lavers, David A., Ralph, F. Martin, Waliser, Duane E., Gershunov, Alexander, Dettinger, Michael D.
Format: Dataset
Language:unknown
Published: UC San Diego Library Digital Collections 2018
Subjects:
Atmospheric rivers
CMIP5 climate projections
Global water cycle
Climate change
water vapor transport
Pacific
North Atlantic
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.6075/j000009g
http://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb2256052x
Description
Summary:Abstract: Global warming of the Earth's atmosphere is hypothesized to lead to an intensification of the global water cycle. To determine associated hydrological changes, most previous research has used precipitation. This study, however, investigates projected changes to global atmospheric water vapor transport (integrated vapor transport (IVT)), the key link between water source and sink regions. Using 22 global circulation models from the Climate Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5, we evaluate, globally, the mean, standard deviation, and the 95th percentiles of IVT from the historical simulations (1979–2005) and two emissions scenarios (2073–2099). Considering the more extreme emissions, multimodel mean IVT increases by 30–40% in the North Pacific and North Atlantic storm tracks and in the equatorial Pacific Ocean trade winds. An acceleration of the high-latitude IVT is also shown. Analysis of low-altitude moisture and winds suggests that these changes are mainly due to higher atmospheric water vapor content.

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