Future changes in intensity and seasonal pattern of occurrence of daily and multi-day annual maximum precipitation over Canada

Summary Daily and multi-day extreme precipitation events can cause important flooding. Assessment of the future evolution of heavy precipitation is therefore crucial in a context of climate change. Simulation results for Canada from the Canadian Global Climate Model (CGCM3) have been analyzed for 1 to 5-day annual maximum (AM) precipitation events over the 1850–2100 period using simulation series from five ensemble members. Trend analysis showed that daily and multi-day intense precipitation series were stationary over the 1850–1980 period while trends emerged during the period 1980–2005. Probabilities of occurrence of AM precipitation for the various months were also estimated. For the historical climate (1850–1980), a comparison with observed data suggested that the model adequately reproduced the observed regional patterns of seasonal occurrence of AM events. Future projections suggest that, for many Canadian regions, a shift will take place from summer to spring and/or autumn in the seasonal occurrence of AM precipitation events. Moreover, statistical frequency analysis of models series suggests that daily and multi-day events will be more intense and frequent in a future climate for all regions except the Prairies. In some regions (e.g. west coast of British Columbia), the return period associated with a given precipitation intensity in historical climate will decrease by a factor of five over the 2080–2100 period. No significant differences have been observed between daily and multi-day projections for intensity/frequency occurrence of AM events.

[1]  J. Kyselý,et al.  Regional growth curves and improved design value estimates of extreme precipitation events in the Czech Republic , 2007 .

[2]  Jin Zhang.  Powerful goodness‐of‐fit tests based on the likelihood ratio , 2002 .

[3]  A. Kitoh,et al.  Projection of global warming onto regional precipitation over Mongolia using a regional climate model , 2007 .

[4]  Xuebin Zhang,et al.  Temperature and precipitation trends in Canada during the 20th century , 2000, Data, Models and Analysis.

[5]  Sheng Yue,et al.  The influence of autocorrelation on the ability to detect trend in hydrological series , 2002 .

[6]  M. Wehner.  Predicted Twenty-First-Century Changes in Seasonal Extreme Precipitation Events in the Parallel Climate Model , 2004 .

[7]  Jin Zhang,et al.  Powerful Two-Sample Tests Based on the Likelihood Ratio , 2006, Technometrics.

[8]  S. Coles,et al.  An Introduction to Statistical Modeling of Extreme Values , 2001 .

[9]  W. J. Conover,et al.  Practical Nonparametric Statistics , 1972 .

[10]  F. Warren,et al.  From impacts to adaptation: Canada in a changing climate 2007 , 2008 .

[11]  David R. Anderson,et al.  Multimodel Inference , 2004 .

[12]  G. Plaut,et al.  Extreme precipitation over the Maritime Alps and associated weather regimes simulated by a regional climate model: Present-day and future climate scenarios , 2006 .

[13]  H. Fowler,et al.  A regional frequency analysis of United Kingdom extreme rainfall from 1961 to 2000 , 2003 .

[14]  D. Stephenson,et al.  Future extreme events in European climate: an exploration of regional climate model projections , 2007 .

[15]  Dominique Paquin,et al.  Evaluation of uncertainties in the CRCM-simulated North American climate , 2008 .

[16]  D. Caya,et al.  Assessment of future change in intensity–duration–frequency (IDF) curves for Southern Quebec using the Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM) , 2007 .

[17]  A. Mailhot,et al.  Trend analysis of winter rainfall over southern Québec and new Brunswick (Canada) , 2007 .

[18]  T. Ouarda,et al.  Generalized maximum likelihood estimators for the nonstationary generalized extreme value model , 2007 .

[19]  J. R. Wallis,et al.  Regional Frequency Analysis: An Approach Based on L-Moments , 1997 .

[20]  L. Vincent,et al.  Changes in Daily and Extreme Temperature and Precipitation Indices for Canada over the Twentieth Century , 2006, Data, Models and Analysis.

[21]  Francis W. Zwiers,et al.  Estimating Extremes in Transient Climate Change Simulations , 2005 .

[22]  J. Räisänen.  CO2-Induced Climate Change in CMIP2 Experiments: Quantification of Agreement and Role of Internal Variability , 2001 .

[23]  C. Frei,et al.  Future change of precipitation extremes in Europe: Intercomparison of scenarios from regional climate models , 2006 .

[24]  Jin Zhang,et al.  k-Sample tests based on the likelihood ratio , 2007, Comput. Stat. Data Anal..

[25]  G. Hegerl,et al.  Changes in temperature and precipitation extremes in the IPCC ensemble of global coupled model simulations , 2007 .

[26]  Slobodan P. Simonovic,et al.  Methodology for Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Large-Scale Flood Protection System , 2003 .

[27]  Bradley A. Wilson,et al.  Monitoring the 1997 flood in the Red River Valley using hydrologic regimes and RADARSAT imagery , 2005 .

[28]  Dominique Paquin,et al.  Climate and Climate Change over North America as Simulated by the Canadian RCM , 2006 .

[29]  S. Emori,et al.  Dynamic and thermodynamic changes in mean and extreme precipitation under changed climate , 2005 .

[30]  F. Mutua,et al.  The use of the Akaike Information Criterion in the identification of an optimum flood frequency model. , 1994 .

[31]  Roger A. Pielke,et al.  Precipitation and Damaging Floods: Trends in the United States, 1932-97 , 2000 .

[32]  S. Schneider,et al.  Climate Change 2007 Synthesis report , 2008 .

[33]  A. Mailhot,et al.  Design criteria of urban drainage infrastructures under climate change. , 2010 .

[34]  S. Yue,et al.  Power of the Mann–Kendall and Spearman's rho tests for detecting monotonic trends in hydrological series , 2002 .

[35]  Carlos A. Coelho,et al.  Evidence of trends in daily climate extremes over southern and west Africa , 2006 .

[36]  V. Singh,et al.  Non-stationary approach to at-site flood frequency modelling I. Maximum likelihood estimation , 2001 .

[37]  Alexei G. Sankovski,et al.  Special report on emissions scenarios , 2000 .

[38]  E. Atallah,et al.  Dynamical and Precipitation Structures of Poleward-Moving Tropical Cyclones in Eastern Canada, 1979–2005 , 2009 .

[39]  F. Zwiers,et al.  Changes in the Extremes of the Climate Simulated by CCC GCM2 under CO2 Doubling , 1998 .