Breaking Rossby waves drive extreme precipitation in the world's arid regions.

ABSTRACT: More than a third of the world's population lives in drylands and is disproportionately at risk from hydrometeorological hazards such as drought and flooding. While weather systems governing precipitation formation in humid regions have been widely explored, our understanding of the atmospheric processes generating precipitation in arid regions remains fragmented at best. Here we show, using a variety of precipitation datasets, that Rossby wave breaking is a key atmospheric driver of precipitation in arid regions worldwide. Rossby wave breaking contributes up to 90% of daily precipitation extremes and up to 80% of total precipitation amounts in arid regions equatorward and downstream of the midlatitude storm tracks. The relevance of Rossby wave breaking for precipitation increases with inc

SUBMITTER: de Vries AJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11415300 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature