A relation between extreme precipitation and surface air temperature over Russia in the last four decades

Precipitation extremes are widely thought to intensify with the global warming due to exponential growth, following the Clausius-Clapeyron (C-C) equation of atmosphere water holding capacity with rising temperatures. However, a number of recent studies based on station and reanalysis data for the contemporary period showed that scaling rates between extreme precipitation and temperature are strongly dependent on temperature range, region and moisture availability. Here, we examine the scaling between daily precipitation extremes and surface air temperature over Russian territory for the last four decades using meteorological stations data and ERA-Interim reanalysis. The precipitation-temperature relation is examined for total precipitation amount and, separately, for convective and large-scale precipitation types. In winter, a general increase of extreme precipitation of all types according to C-C relation is revealed. For the Russian Far East region, the stratiform precipitation extremes scale with surface air temperature following even super C-C rates, about two times as fast as C-C. However, in summer we find a peak-like structure of the precipitation-temperature scaling, especially for the convective precipitation in the southern regions of the country. Being consistent with the C-C relationship, extreme precipitation peaks at the temperature range between 15 °C and 20 °C. For the higher temperatures, the negative scaling prevails. Furthermore, it was shown that relative humidity in general decreases with growing temperature in summer. Notably, there appears to be a temperature threshold in the 15-20 °C range, beyond that relative humidity begins to decline more rapidly. This indicates that moisture availability can be the major factor for the peak-shaped relationship between extreme precipitation and temperature revealed by our analysis.