Spatial extent of precipitation events: when big is getting bigger
Using a sub-selection of regional climate models at 0.11 degrees (approximate to 12 km) grid resolution from the EURO-CORDEX ensemble, we investigate how the spatial extent of areas associated with the most intensive daily precipitation events changes as a consequence of global warming. We address this by analysing three different warming levels: 1 degrees C, 2 degrees C and 3 degrees C. We find that not only does the intensity of such events increase, but their size will also change as a function of the warming: larger systems becomes more frequent and larger, while systems of lesser extent are reduced in numbers. ; We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme's CORDEX project for its role in making available the WCRP CORDEX multi-model data set, and we thank the climate modeling groups for producing and making available their model outputs. D.M. and J.H.C acknowledge funding by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 project EUCP (grant agreement 776613). T. O. was supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) under the programme TUBITAK 2219 - International Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. ; Publisher's Version