Projected changes of rainfall seasonality and dry spells in a high concentration pathway 21st century scenario

TL;DR

This study projects that under a high emission scenario, rainfall seasonality will intensify with longer dry spells and shifts in monsoon timing, affecting regional water cycles globally according to climate model simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis combining rainfall centroid and information theory metrics to assess changes in rainfall seasonality and dry spells in climate projections.

Findings

Increased dry days up to one month in some regions.

Shift of monsoon rainfall timing from early to late in the year.

High inter-model agreement on dry spell increases in Mediterranean and South America.

Abstract

In this diagnostic study we analyze changes of rainfall seasonality and dry spells by the end of the twenty-first century under the most extreme IPCC5 emission scenario (RCP8.5) as projected by twenty-four coupled climate models participating to Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5. We use estimates of the centroid of the monthly rainfall distribution as an index of the rainfall timing and a threshold-independent, information theory-based quantity such as relative entropy (RE) to quantify the concentration of annual rainfall and the number of dry months and to build a monsoon dimensionless seasonality index (DSI). The RE is projected to increase, with high inter-model agreement over Mediterranean-type regions (southern Europe, northern Africa and southern Australia) and areas of South and Central America, implying an increase in the number of dry days up to one month by the end of the twenty-first century. Positive RE changes are also projected over the monsoon regions of southern Africa and North America, South America. These trends are consistent with a shortening of the wet season associated with a more prolonged pre-monsoonal dry period. The extent of the global monsoon region, characterized by large DSI, is projected to remain substantially unaltered. Centroid analysis shows that most of CMIP5 projections suggest that the monsoonal annual rainfall distribution is expected to change from early to late in the course of the hydrological year by the end of the twenty-first century and particularly after year 2050. This trend is particularly evident over Northern Africa, Southern Africa and western Mexico, where more than 90 % of the models project a delay of the rainfall centroid from a few days up to two weeks. Over the remaining monsoonal regions, there is little inter-model agreement in terms of centroid changes.