Robust Projections of Changing Precipitation Evenness in a Warming Climate

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Abstract

Global warming is expected to increase global mean precipitation by 2%–4%/K, but this increase may be uneven, leading to more flooding but also droughts. Utilizing the Gini index, a metric frequently used in economics, we analyze the evenness of precipitation distribution locally and globally from daily to annual-mean timescale in CMIP6 global warming simulations. Spatial evenness of daily precipitation decreases over land and ocean, tropics and extratropics. Changes in temporal evenness of local-daily precipitation show a complex geographic pattern. However, particularly over land, we show that a simple theoretical scaling explains this complexity to result from increased precipitation intensity scaling at about the Clausius-Clapeyron rate, and a local balance between changes in annual-mean precipitation and dry-day fraction. These results provide a novel perspective on the relation between global constraints on the hydrological cycle to regional precipitation changes independent of changes in the geographic distribution of precipitation.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article numbere2025GL114953
JournalGeophysical Research Letters
Volume52
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - May 16 2025

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Geophysics
  • General Earth and Planetary Sciences

Keywords

  • dry days
  • Gini index
  • global warming
  • precipitation
  • unevenness

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