Extreme persistent rainfall poses serious impacts on human and natural systems, predominately through its related hydrogeological disasters. Due to sustained heavy downpours, the summer of 2020 was the second wettest on record over Northeast Indian subcontinent since 1901. Here, we find that this orographically anchored extreme rainfall event was largely associated with the anomalous anticyclone (AAC) over the Indo-Northwest Pacific region and La Nina-induced Walker circulation intensification. The overall effect of anthropogenic forcings contributed little to the occurrence probability of this event, because the warming and wetting effects of greenhouse gases were almost negated by anthropogenic aerosols. Climate models project a prominent increasing trend of such extreme event under future greenhouse-induced warming due to increase in atmospheric water vapor and 2020-like AAC frequency. Our findings thus call for scaling up climate change adaptation efforts for increasingly extreme persistent rainfall in highly populated but low-resilience South Asian developing countries.
Tang, HS; Wang, J; Hu, KM; Huang, G; Chowdary, JS; Wang, Y; Wang, ZY; Tang, B
Increasing 2020-Like Boreal Summer Rainfall Extremes Over Northeast Indian Subcontinent Under Greenhouse Warming
Geophysical Research Letters