Large rainfall changes consistently projected over substantial areas of tropical land

ABSTRACT Many tropical countries are exceptionally vulnerable to changes in rainfall patterns, with floods or droughts often severely affecting human life and health, food and water

supplies, ecosystems and infrastructure1. There is widespread disagreement among climate model projections of how and where rainfall will change over tropical land at the regional scales

relevant to impacts2,3,4, with different models predicting the position of current tropical wet and dry regions to shift in different ways5,6. Here we show that despite uncertainty in the

location of future rainfall shifts, climate models consistently project that large rainfall changes will occur for a considerable proportion of tropical land over the twenty-first century.

The area of semi-arid land affected by large changes under a higher emissions scenario is likely to be greater than during even the most extreme regional wet or dry periods of the twentieth

century, such as the Sahel drought of the late 1960s to 1990s. Substantial changes are projected to occur by mid-century—earlier than previously expected2,7—and to intensify in line with

global temperature rise. Therefore, current climate projections contain quantitative, decision-relevant information on future regional rainfall changes, particularly with regard to climate

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our FAQs * Contact customer support SIMILAR CONTENT BEING VIEWED BY OTHERS RAREST RAINFALL EVENTS WILL SEE THE GREATEST RELATIVE INCREASE IN MAGNITUDE UNDER FUTURE CLIMATE CHANGE Article

Open access 10 October 2022 AMPLIFIED WARMING OF EXTREME TEMPERATURES OVER TROPICAL LAND Article 21 October 2021 INCREASING HEAT AND RAINFALL EXTREMES NOW FAR OUTSIDE THE HISTORICAL CLIMATE

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Hadley Centre Climate Programme (GA01101). We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate

modelling groups for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP the US Department of Energy’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating

support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals. We thank G. J. van Oldenborgh for making the CMIP5 data

easily available via the KNMI Climate Explorer tool. AUTHOR INFORMATION AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * Met Office Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road, Exeter EX1 3PB, UK, Robin Chadwick, Peter Good, 

Gill Martin & David P. Rowell Authors * Robin Chadwick View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Peter Good View author publications You can

also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Gill Martin View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * David P. Rowell View author

publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar CONTRIBUTIONS R.C. conceived the original idea for the study, and performed the analysis. All authors provided

additional ideas, helped to refine the methodology, and contributed towards writing the manuscript. CORRESPONDING AUTHOR Correspondence to Robin Chadwick. ETHICS DECLARATIONS COMPETING

INTERESTS The authors declare no competing financial interests. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION (PDF 758 KB) RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS

ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Chadwick, R., Good, P., Martin, G. _et al._ Large rainfall changes consistently projected over substantial areas of tropical land. _Nature Clim Change_ 6, 177–181

(2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2805 Download citation * Received: 22 April 2015 * Accepted: 21 August 2015 * Published: 28 September 2015 * Issue Date: February 2016 * DOI:

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