Statistical Emulations of Extreme Precipitation for Future Climate Scenarios

Extreme precipitation events have recently shown the potential to cause catastrophic flooding and damages, and the increasing effects of climate change are expected to intensify the associated socioeconomic and environmental risks. To facilitate the assessment of future scenarios, we extend the capabilities of the probabilistic emulator MESMER-X to represent extreme precipitation.
MESMER-X, designed to generate spatially resolved realizations of impact-relevant variables — such as annual maximum temperatures, fire weather, and soil moisture — for given global mean temperature trajectories, is adapted to emulate annual maximum daily precipitation.  Using data from CMIP6 Earth System Models across various Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, the emulator captures the underlying statistical distributions and spatial patterns, enabling the exploration of customized future scenarios at a fraction of the computational cost of fully coupled Earth System Models.  The performance of the emulation process is evaluated through probabilistic skill scores, residual analysis, and quantile comparisons with the original datasets.
MESMER-X outputs can support climate risk models in assessing future damages under policy-relevant scenarios, including those not previously explored with Earth System Models. This extension highlights the flexibility of MESMER-X in emulating a wide range of variables and provides a valuable support for analyzing precipitation-related climate impacts and potential targeted adaptation strategies.