Changing intensity and seasonality of wet extremes over Europe

Daily precipitation extremes are projected to intensify with global warming. Here the focus is on how extreme precipitation scales with the changing global mean surface air temperature (GSAT) and how much their inherent seasonality will change, using historical and SSP5-8.5 scenario simulations from 18 CMIP6 models for different sub-domains over Europe. With strong future global warming, the annual maximum precipitation (RX1DAY) is found to occur later in the year, although this shift is model-dependent and hardly significant in the multi-model distribution. Using generalized extreme value theory also provides evidence for the intensification of wet extremes in the future. In addition, we use monthly model outputs to decompose changes in RX1DAY occurring at the peak of the extreme season into several contributions, which gives insights into the underlying physical mechanisms that control the response of precipitation extremes and their inter-model spread.