Earth’s water cycle in a changing climate — Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society

Earth’s water cycle in a changing climate

Earth’s water cycle in a changing climate (#205)

Angeline Pendergrass ¹

University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), Boulder, Colorado, USA

Precipitation is a consequential climate feature, which plays an important role in Earth’s physical geography and also its biosphere. As climate changes, so does the risk of disruption of the water cycle we have adapted to. The distribution of precipitation (or lack thereof) in space and time is anticipated to change, and in some respects already is changing, in response to warming. But quantifying the various aspects of this risk is a challenge because of the diverse sources of uncertainty – including natural variability, structural differences among climate models and their projections, and the range of trajectories society might choose to follow.

This talk will highlight some of the key questions about Earth’s water cycle and its changes: What are compact yet powerful metrics to describe precipitation and drought? How does precipitation vary over time, and how does it respond to natural variations and anthropogenic forcing? How accurately do models simulate precipitation, and how can we do better? What are the causes and consequences of precipitation variability and change for circulation of the atmosphere and ocean, the land surface, climate sensitivity, and society? I will discuss recent progress as well as challenges that remain outstanding.

#amos2020

Authors contributing to this abstract.

Pendergrass, A

Dr. Angeline Pendergrass is a research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, USA, where she is part of the CATALYST group in the Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory. She studies how climate change will impact precipitation and the hydrologic cycle on a global scale. Her research explores fundamental questions about global precipitation variability: how much precipitation is there, what is its distribution in space and in time, and how will it change in the future? Pendergrass uses climate model simulations and analysis of observational data to study changes in the distribution of precipitation, including extremes. Pendergrass holds a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, as well as an M.S. from the same department. She holds a B.S. in meteorology/math and physics from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. She has been based in Boulder since arriving there in early 2014 for an Advanced Studies Program postdoctoral fellowship at NCAR, and then moving to CIRES (a cooperative institute between the University of Colorado-Boulder and NOAA ESRL, also in Boulder) for a Visiting Fellowship, before arriving in her current position at NCAR.

Earth’s water cycle in a changing climate (#205)

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