Bio:
Dr. Dai is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Atmospheric & Environmental Sciences at the University at Albany, State University of New York, USA. He is an internationally renowned climate scientist with a focus on climate variability and change, Arctic climate, the global water cycle, hydroclimate, drought, the diurnal cycle, and climate data analysis.
With more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, he has received 68,000-plus citations with an H-index of 94. He is one of the world's top 1% Highly Cited Researchers. Dr. Dai is ranked No.2 and No.21 in Meteorology/Atmospheric Science based on, respectively, 2019 citations and 1996-2019 total citations according to a Stanford study. He served as the Chair of the Climate Variability and Change Committee and Editor of Journal of Climate of the American Meteorological Society(AMS). He is an AMS and AGU Fellow.
Abstract:
Precipitation is arguably the most important weather and climate variable. How precipitation may change under anthropogenic global warming is of great concern. In this talk, I will first discuss the basic controls of precipitation, including thermodynamic and energetic constraints on global-mean precipitation. I will then examine how precipitation has been simulated in coupled global climate models and convection-permitting regional climate models, followed by model-projected changes in precipitation amount, frequency, intensity and phase (snow vs. rain) and underlying mechanisms. Finally, I will address issues in separating forced response from large internal variability in local and regional precipitation from observations and individual model simulations and examine how precipitation has changed in historical records.