Reduced exposure to extreme precipitation from 0.5 °C less warming in global land monsoon regions.

ABSTRACT: The Paris Agreement set a goal to keep global warming well below 2 °C and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 °C. Understanding how 0.5 °C less warming reduces impacts and risks is key for climate policies. Here, we show that both areal and population exposures to dangerous extreme precipitation events (e.g., once in 10- and 20-year events) would increase consistently with warming in the populous global land monsoon regions based on Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 multimodel projections. The 0.5 °C less warming would reduce areal and population exposures to once-in-20-year extreme precipitation events by 25% (18-41%) and 36% (22-46%), respectively. The avoided impacts are more remarkable for more intense extremes. Among the monsoon subregions, South Africa is the most impacted,

SUBMITTER: Zhang W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6082837 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature