Relationship between Extreme Precipitation and Temperature in Two Different Regions: The Tibetan Plateau and Middle–East China

The change of extreme precipitation with temperature has regional characteristics in the context of global warming. In this study, radiosonde data, co-located rain gauge (RG) observations, and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation radar (PR) products are used to explore the relationship between extreme precipitation intensity and near-surface temperature in Middle–East China (MEC) and the eastern Tibetan Plateau (TP) during 1998–2012. The results show that extreme precipitation intensity increases with increasing temperature at an approximate Clausius–Clapeyron (C–C) rate (i.e., water vapor increases by 7% as temperature increases by 1°C based on the C–C equation) in MEC and TP, but the rate of increase is larger in TP than in MEC. This is probably because TP (MEC) is featured with deep convective (stratiform) precipitation, which releases more (less) latent heat and strengthens the convection intensity on a shorter (longer) timescale. It is also found that when temperature is higher than 25°C (15°C) in MEC (TP), the extreme precipitation intensity decreases with rise of temperature, suggesting that the precipitation intensity does not always increase with warming. In this case, the limited atmospheric humidity and precipitable water could be the primary factors for the decrease in extreme precipitation intensity at higher temperatures.