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The bridge between precipitation and temperature – Pressure Change Events: Modeling future non-stationary precipitation
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

The bridge between precipitation and temperature – Pressure Change Events: Modeling future non-stationary precipitation

Ziwen Yu, Stephanie Miller, Franco Montalto and Upmanu Lall
Journal of hydrology (Amsterdam), v 562, pp 346-357
Jul 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2018.05.014
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2018.05.014View
Accepted (AM)Open Access (Publisher-Specific),  Open

Abstract

Average monthly temperature Extreme event GCM temperature Hourly precipitation Precipitation analysis Pressure change event Probability of precipitation Weather type categorization
•Precipitation was investigated through pressure change event (PCE).•PCE was related to probability of precipitation (POP) and precipitation depth (PD).•PCE occurrence was associated to average monthly temperature (AMT).•The associations between POP and PD with PCE and AMT were explored. Anthropogenic warming may change precipitation patterns, impacting infrastructure performance and reliability. Future precipitation statistics generated using General Circulation Models (GCM) are, however, often biased and not easily applied to problems such as runoff estimation. Stochastic weather generation is hence used as an alternative to GCMs in hydrology and hydraulic modelling. This paper explores the dependence of fine temporal precipitation characteristics on air pressure and air temperature using historic observations. The goal is to develop, based on the key causes of precipitation, a climatological basis for a stochastic precipitation generator for non-stationary precipitation under climate change conditions. The analysis focuses on precipitation in the urban Northeast United States and utilizes pooled observations from meteorological stations in New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston over 60 years. A negative correlation between hourly Probability of Precipitation (POP) and air pressure is observed. When the historical records are discretized using air Pressure Change Events (PCE), Decreasing Pressure Change Events (DePCEs) had a higher POP and a higher Precipitation Depth (PD) than Increasing Pressure Change Events (InPCEs). Temperature was more strongly associated with PD during DePCEs than InPCEs; this association was more pronounced during high magnitude PCEs and extreme events. The potential for simulating future hourly precipitation by associating historic hourly precipitation patterns with PCE’s and monthly temperature is assessed.

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7 Record Views
15 citations in Web of Science
14 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#6 Clean Water and Sanitation
#13 Climate Action
#14 Life Below Water

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Engineering, Civil
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Water Resources
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