Impacts of global warming on extreme rainfall of a slow-moving typhoon: A case study for Typhoon Talas (2011)

Abstract

This study investigated the impacts of global warming on extreme rainfall produced by a slow-moving typhoon by conducting pseudo-global warming (PGW) experiments. We examined Typhoon Talas (2011) that caused long-lasting heavy rainfall exceeding 2000 mm over the Kii Peninsula. The experiments successfully captured the track and translation speed of the actual typhoon, which enabled to quantitatively assess the climate change impacts. The PGW experiments indicated that the extreme rainfall is intensified in the future climates than in the present climate. Especially, the higher extremes of the accumulated rainfall are projected to be more severe in the future climate scenario. The analysis on the environmental factors showed that the cases with increased precipitable water lead to the increases in rainfall in future climates, despite the stabilized atmospheric conditions. Among the PGW experiments, the most increased amount of rainfall was found not to be produced by the most intensified typhoon.