2009 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Emission scenario dependency of precipitation on global warming

Research Project

Project/Area Number	20740274
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Meteorology/Physical oceanography/Hydrology
Research Institution	National Institute for Environmental Studies
Principal Investigator	SHIOGAMA Hideo National Institute for Environmental Studies, 大気圏環境研究領域, NIES特別研究員 (30391113)
Project Period (FY)	2008 – 2009
Keywords	気候変動 / 気象学
Research Abstract	The precipitation sensitivity per 1K of global warming in 21st century climate projections is smaller in an emission scenario with larger greenhouse gas concentrations and aerosol emissions, according to the MIROC3.2 coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model. We examined the reasons for the precipitation sensitivity to emission scenarios by performing separated individual forcing runs under high and low emission scenarios. It was found that the dependency on emission scenario is mainly caused by differences in black and organic carbon aerosol forcing between the emission scenarios and that the precipitation is more sensitive to carbon aerosols than well-mixed greenhouse gases. We also investigated the reason for the larger precipitation sensitivity (larger magnitude of precipitation decrease per 1K cooling of temperature) in the carbon aerosol runs.