Surface Observed Global Land Precipitation Variations during 1900-88

The authors have analyzed global station data and created a gridded dataset of monthly precipitation for the period of 1900‐88. Statistical analyses suggest that discontinuities associated with instrumental errors are large for many high-latitude station records, although they are unlikely to be significant for the majority of the stations. The first leading EOF in global precipitation fields is an ENSO-related pattern, concentrating mostly in the low latitudes. The second leading EOF depicts a linear increasing trend (;2.4 mm decade21) in global precipitation fields during the period of 1900‐88. Consistent with the zonal precipitation trends identified in previous analyses, the EOF trend is seen as a long-term increase mostly in North America, mid- to high-latitude Eurasia, Argentina, and Australia. The spatial patterns of the trend EOF and the rate of increase are generally consistent with those of the precipitation changes in increasing CO 2 GCM experiments. The North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) accounts for ;10% of December‐February precipitation variance over North Atlantic surrounding regions. The mode suggests that during high-NAO-index winters, precipitation is above normal in northern (.508N) Europe, the eastern United States, northern Africa, and the Mediterranean, while below-normal precipitation occurs in southern Europe, eastern Canada, and western Greenland. Wet and dry months of one standard deviation occur at probabilities close to those of a normal distribution in midlatitudes. In the subtropics, the mean interval between two extreme events is longer. The monthly wet and dry events seldom (probability , 5%) last longer than 2 months. ENSO is the single largest cause of global extreme precipitation events. Consistent with the upward trend in global precipitation, globally, the averaged mean interval between two dry months increased by ;28% from 1900‐44 to 1945‐88. The percentage of wet areas over the United States has more than doubled (from ;12% to .24%) since the 1970s, while the percentage of dry areas has decreased by a similar amount since the 1940s. Severe droughts and floods comparable to the 1988 drought and 1993 flood in the Midwest have occurred 2‐9 times in each of several other regions of the world during this century.

[1]  M. Kendall.  Rank Correlation Methods , 1949 .

[2]  John E. Kutzbach,et al.  Empirical Eigenvectors of Sea-Level Pressure, Surface Temperature and Precipitation Complexes over North America , 1967 .

[3]  C. Duchon.  Lanczos Filtering in One and Two Dimensions , 1979 .

[4]  Phillip A. Arkin,et al.  The Relationship between Fractional Coverage of High Cloud and Rainfall Accumulations during GATE over the B-Scale Array , 1979 .

[5]  J. Wallace,et al.  Teleconnections in the Geopotential Height Field during the Northern Hemisphere Winter , 1981 .

[6]  P. Arkin,et al.  On the Relationship between Satellite-Observed Cloud Cover and Precipitation , 1981 .

[7]  Robert F. Cahalan,et al.  Sampling Errors in the Estimation of Empirical Orthogonal Functions , 1982 .

[8]  E. Rasmusson,et al.  Variations in Tropical Sea Surface Temperature and Surface Wind Fields Associated with the Southern Oscillation/El Niño , 1982 .

[9]  C. Obled,et al.  Objective analyses and mapping techniques for rainfall fields: An objective comparison , 1982 .

[10]  J. Namias.  Some Causes of United States Drought , 1983 .

[11]  L. Jaeger,et al.  Monthly and Areal Patterns of Mean Global Precipitation , 1983 .

[12]  P. B. Wright,et al.  Relationships between Indices of the Southern Oscillation , 1984 .

[13]  H. Alexandersson.  A homogeneity test applied to precipitation data , 1986 .

[14]  G. Bastin,et al.  On the Accuracy of Areal Rainfall Estimation - a Case-study , 1987 .

[15]  J. Hansen,et al.  Global trends of measured surface air temperature , 1987 .

[16]  C. Ropelewski,et al.  Global and Regional Scale Precipitation Patterns Associated with the El Niño/Southern Oscillation , 1987 .

[17]  J. Eischeid,et al.  Precipitation Fluctuations over Northern Hemisphere Land Areas Since the Mid-19th Century , 1987, Science.

[18]  C. Ropelewski.  The global climate for June-August 1988: a swing to the positive phase of the southern oscillation, drought in the United States, and abundant rain in monsoon areas , 1988 .

[19]  J. Hansen,et al.  Global surface air temperatures: update through 1987 , 1988 .

[20]  K. Lau,et al.  Annual cycle, quasi-biennial oscillation, and Southern Oscillation in global precipitation , 1988 .

[21]  J. Janowiak.  The Global Climate for March-May 1988: The End of the 1986-87 Pacific Warm Episode and the Onset of Widespread Drought in the United States. , 1988 .

[22]  J. Eischeid,et al.  Precipitation fluctuations over global land areas since the late 1800's , 1989 .

[23]  Warren M. Washington,et al.  Climate sensitivity due to increased CO2: experiments with a coupled atmosphere and ocean general circulation model , 1989 .

[24]  C. F. Ropelewski,et al.  Precipitation Patterns Associated with the High Index Phase of the Southern Oscillation , 1989 .

[25]  J. Houghton,et al.  Climate change : the IPCC scientific assessment , 1990 .

[26]  K. Vinnikov,et al.  Empirical Data on Contemporary Global Climate Changes (Temperature and Precipitation) , 1990 .

[27]  D. Legates,et al.  Mean seasonal and spatial variability in gauge‐corrected, global precipitation , 1990 .

[28]  T. Karl,et al.  Increased cloudiness in the United States during the first half of the Twentieth Century: Fact or fiction? , 1990 .

[29]  J. Janowiak,et al.  Analyses of the global distribution of precipitation , 1991 .

[30]  P. Jones,et al.  A comprehensive precipitation data set for global land areas , 1991 .

[31]  Thomas R. Karl,et al.  Overcoming biases of precipitation measurement : a history of the USSR experience , 1991 .

[32]  J. Janowiak,et al.  Rainfall variations in the tropics during 1986-1989, as estimated from observations of cloud-top temperature , 1991 .

[33]  Syukuro Manabe,et al.  Transient responses of a coupled ocean-atmosphere model to gradual changes of atmospheric CO2 , 1991 .

[34]  T. Barnett,et al.  Space and Time Scales of Global Tropospheric Moisture , 1991 .

[35]  Monitoring Tropospheric Water Vapor Changes Using Radiosonde Data , 1991 .

[36]  M. Hulme.  A 1951–80 global land precipitation climatology for the evaluation of general circulation models , 1992 .

[37]  Neville Nicholls,et al.  Australian rainfall trends during the twentieth century , 1992 .

[38]  W. Cotton,et al.  Storm and Cloud Dynamics , 1992 .

[39]  P. Lamb,et al.  Further case studies of tropical Atlantic surface atmospheric and oceanic patterns associated with sub-Saharan drought , 1992 .

[40]  K. Briffa,et al.  Global Surface Air Temperature Variations During the Twentieth Century: Part 1, Spatial, Temporal and Seasonal Details , 1992 .

[41]  Kevin E. Trenberth,et al.  Issues in Establishing Causes of the 1988 Drought over North America. , 1992 .

[42]  A. Henderson‐sellers.  Continental cloudiness changes this century , 1992 .

[43]  Russell S. Vose,et al.  The Global Historical Climatology Network: Long-term monthly temperature, precipitation, sea level pressure, and station pressure data , 1992 .

[44]  Alan Robock,et al.  Relationships between tropospheric water vapor and surface temperature as observed by radiosondes , 1992 .

[45]  R. Spencer.  Global Oceanic Precipitation from the MSU during 1979—91 and Comparisons to Other Climatologies , 1993 .

[46]  Clara Deser,et al.  Surface Climate Variations over the North Atlantic Ocean during Winter: 1900–1989 , 1993 .

[47]  Yuan Zhang,et al.  Structure and Seasonality of Interannual and Interdecadal Variability of the Geopotential Height and Temperature Fields in the Northern Hemisphere Troposphere. , 1993 .

[48]  Inez Y. Fung,et al.  Can climate variability contribute to the “missing” CO2 sink? , 1993 .

[49]  Darren L. Jackson,et al.  A physical retrieval of cloud liquid water over the global oceans using special sensor microwave/imager (SSM/I) observations , 1993 .

[50]  S. Nicholson.  An Overview of African Rainfall Fluctuations of the Last Decade , 1993 .

[51]  Robert G. Quayle,et al.  Detecting climate variations and change: New challenges for observing and data management systems , 1993 .

[52]  Oceanic monthly rainfall derived from SSM/I , 1993 .

[53]  David R. Legates,et al.  The Accuracy of United States Precipitation Data , 1994 .

[54]  D. Easterling,et al.  Variability and Trends of Total Precipitation and Snowfall over the United States and Canada , 1994 .

[55]  Stanley A. Changnon,et al.  Climatic Aspects of the 1993 Upper Mississippi River Basin Flood , 1994 .

[56]  T. Smith,et al.  The Global Climate for March-May 1993: Mature ENSO Conditions Persist and a Blizzard Blankets the Eastern United States. , 1994 .

[57]  J. Hurrell.  Decadal Trends in the North Atlantic Oscillation: Regional Temperatures and Precipitation , 1995, Science.

[58]  U. Schneider,et al.  Global precipitation estimates based on a technique for combining satellite-based estimates, rain gauge analysis, and NWP model precipitation information , 1995 .

[59]  P. Xie,et al.  An Intercomparison of Gauge Observations and Satellite Estimates of Monthly Precipitation , 1995 .

[60]  David Rind,et al.  A coupled atmosphere‐ocean model for transient climate change studies , 1995 .

[61]  A. Dai.  Global Precipitation Variability and its Relationship with Other Climate Changes , 1996 .

[62]  J. Houghton,et al.  Climate change 1995: the science of climate change. , 1996 .

[63]  Thomas C. Peterson,et al.  On the Development and Use of Homogenized Climate Datasets , 1996 .

[64]  W. Elliott,et al.  Tropospheric Water Vapor Climatology and Trends over North America: 1973–93 , 1996 .

[65]  Louis J. Bajuk,et al.  Interpretation of Interdecadal Trends in Northern Hemisphere Surface Air Temperature , 1996 .

[66]  K. Trenberth,et al.  Physical Processes Involved in the 1988 Drought and 1993 Floods in North America , 1996 .

[67]  A. Dai,et al.  Clouds, precipitation and temperature range , 1997, Nature.