Surface Observed Global Land Precipitation Variations during 1900–88

Abstract

The authors have analyzed global station data and created a gridded dataset of monthly precipitation for the period of 1900?88. Statistical analyses suggest that discontinuities associated with instrumental errors are large for many high-latitude station records, although they are unlikely to be significant for the majority of the stations. The first leading EOF in global precipitation fields is an ENSO-related pattern, concentrating mostly in the low latitudes. The second leading EOF depicts a linear increasing trend (?2.4 mm decade?1) in global precipitation fields during the period of 1900?88. Consistent with the zonal precipitation trends identified in previous analyses, the EOF trend is seen as a long-term increase mostly in North America, mid- to high-latitude Eurasia, Argentina, and Australia. The spatial patterns of the trend EOF and the rate of increase are generally consistent with those of the precipitation changes in increasing CO2 GCM experiments. The North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) accounts for ?10% of December?February precipitation variance over North Atlantic surrounding regions. The mode suggests that during high-NAO-index winters, precipitation is above normal in northern (>50°N) Europe, the eastern United States, northern Africa, and the Mediterranean, while below-normal precipitation occurs in southern Europe, eastern Canada, and western Greenland. Wet and dry months of one standard deviation occur at probabilities close to those of a normal distribution in midlatitudes. In the subtropics, the mean interval between two extreme events is longer. The monthly wet and dry events seldom (probability < 5%) last longer than 2 months. ENSO is the single largest cause of global extreme precipitation events. Consistent with the upward trend in global precipitation, globally, the averaged mean interval between two dry months increased by ?28% from 1900?44 to 1945?88. The percentage of wet areas over the United States has more than doubled (from ?12% to >24%) since the 1970s, while the percentage of dry areas has decreased by a similar amount since the 1940s. Severe droughts and floods comparable to the 1988 drought and 1993 flood in the Midwest have occurred 2?9 times in each of several other regions of the world during this century.