It is widely recognized that future rainfall extremes will intensify. This expectation is tied to the Clausius-Clapeyron (CC) relation, stating that the maximum water vapour content in the atmosphere increases by 6-7% per degree warming. Scaling rates for the dependency of hourly precipitation extremes on near-surface (dew point) temperature derived from day-to-day variability have been found to exceed this relation (super-CC). However, both the applicability of this approach in a long-term climate change context, and the physical realism of super-CC rates have been questioned. Here, we analyse three different climate change experiments with a convection-permitting model over Western Europe: simple uniform-warming, 11-year pseudo-global warming and 11-year global climate model driven. The uniform-warming experiment results in consistent increases to the intensity of hourly rainfall extremes of approximately 11% per degree for moderate to high extremes. The other two, more realistic, experiments show smaller increases-usually at or below the CC rate-for moderate extremes, mostly resulting from significant decreases to rainfall occurrence. However, changes to the most extreme events are broadly consistent with 1.5-2 times the CC rate (10-14% per degree), as predicted from the present-day scaling rate for the highest percentiles. This result has important implications for climate adaptation. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Intensification of short-duration rainfall extremes and implications for flash flood risks'.

There is increasing evidence that local rainfall extremes can increase with warming at a higher rate than expected from the Clausius-Clapeyron (CC) relation. The exact mechanisms behind this super-CC scaling phenomenon are still unsolved. Recent studies highlight invigorated local dynamics as a contributor to enhanced precipitation rates with warming. Here, cold pools play an important role in the process of organization and deepening of convective clouds. Another known effect of cold pools is the amplification of low-level moisture variability. Yet, how these processes respond to climatic warming and how they relate to enhanced precipitation rates remains largely unanswered. Unlike other studies which use rather simple approaches mimicking climate change, we present a much more comprehensive set of experiments using a high-resolution large eddy simulation (LES) model. We use an idealized but realistically forced case setup, representative for conditions with extreme summer precipitation in midlatitudes. Based on that, we examine how a warmer atmosphere under the assumption of constant and varying relative humidity, lapse rate changes and enhanced large-scale dynamics influence precipitation rates, cold pool dynamics, and the low-level moisture field. Warmer conditions generally lead to larger and more intense events, accompanied by enhanced cold pool dynamics and a concurring moisture accumulation in confined regions. The latter are known as preferred locations for new convective events. Our results show that cold pool dynamics play an increasingly important role in shaping the response of local precipitation extremes to global warming, providing a potential mechanism for super-CC behavior as subject for future research.

Observations show that subdaily precipitation extremes increase with dew point temperature at a rate exceeding the Clausius-Clapeyron (CC) relation. The understanding of this so-called super CC scaling is still incomplete, and observations of convective cell properties could provide important information. Here the size and intensity of rain cells are investigated by using a tracking of rainfall events in high-resolution radar data. Higher intensities are accompanied by larger rainfall areas. However, whereas small rain cells mainly follow CC scaling, larger cells display super CC behavior. Even more, for dew point exceeding 15°C, the rain cell size has to increase in order to sustain super CC scaling and a remarked increase in rain cell area is found. Our results imply that the source area of moisture, the cloud size, and the degree of mesoscale organization play key roles in the context of a warming climate.

Large-eddy simulations with strong lateral forcing representative of precipitation over the Netherlands are performed to investigate the influence of stability, relative humidity (RH), and moisture convergence on precipitation. Furthermore, a simple climate perturbation is applied to analyze the precipitation response to increasing temperatures. Precipitation is decomposed to distinguish between processes affecting the precipitating area and the precipitation intensity. It is shown that amplification of the moisture convergence and destabilization of the atmosphere both lead to an increase in precipitation, but on account of different effects: atmospheric stability mainly influences the precipitation intensity, whereas the moisture convergence mainly controls the precipitation area fraction. Extreme precipitation intensities show qualitatively similar sensitivities to atmospheric stability and moisture convergence. Precipitation increases with RH due to an increase in area fraction, despite a decrease in intensity. The precipitation response to the climate perturbation shows a stronger response for the precipitation intensity than the overall precipitation, with no clear dependency on changes in atmospheric stability, moisture convergence, and relative humidity.

Research on relations between atmospheric conditions and extreme precipitation is important to understand and model present-day climate extremes and assess how precipitation extremes might evolve in a future climate. Here we present a statistical analysis of the relation between large-scale conditions and hourly precipitation at midlatitudes, by using observations of the Netherlands combined with a regional reanalysis. The aim is to gain a better understanding of the typical large-scale atmospheric conditions and large-scale forcing associated with extreme hourly precipitation and determine the typical differences between cases of extreme precipitation and weaker events. To avoid double counting, we perform an event-based analysis and consider the hourly peak intensity, rather than all hourly data. Atmospheric large-scale profiles consistently show a clear separation between precipitation deciles, characterized by increasing instability and moisture content of the atmosphere for more extreme precipitation. Furthermore, stronger events are characterized by larger atmospheric forcing preceding the event, which primarily relates to vertical motions. Based on these results, four atmospheric parameters, describing atmospheric moisture, stability and large-scale convergence, are analyzed as potential indicators of strong precipitation events. Despite positive relations between these parameters and the peak intensity, their correlations are found to be weak.