Researchers from Iowa State University (ISU) have utilized U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) ACCESS allocations on Stampede2 at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) to better understand the relationship between extreme precipitation and multiple storm types in the Midwestern United States.

“Climate change is expected to increase climatological precipitation globally, however, there may be little correspondence with regional storm-based changes,” said Christina Patricola, an ISU associate professor in the Earth, Atmosphere, and Climate Department. “There remains uncertainty in future precipitation projections due to the use of algorithms that estimate convection in most global models so we investigated historically impactful extreme precipitation events from multiple types of Midwest storms using a regional climate model at a high resolution that represents convection without algorithms.”

The ACCESS allocations at TACC made it possible to run simulations with the high three-kilometer grid spacing necessary for this study – we ran a total of 100 simulations representing five-member ensembles of ten extreme precipitation events in two climate states. 

–Christina Patricola, associate professor at the Iowa State University Earth, Atmosphere, and Climate Department

Patricola worked with Tyler Mercurio, an ISU graduate student, who simulated storms – such as thunderstorms, tropical cyclones and winter storms–under environmental conditions representative of historical and future climates. Their study found that future precipitation changes depend on storm type–with increases for synoptic-scale storm types in the cold-season (winter storms) and warm-season (tropical cyclone remnants), but no consensus for mesoscale events in the warm-season (thunderstorms).

“Our research highlights the importance of considering storm type in future extreme precipitation projections,” Mercurio said. “And, we would not have been able to conduct this study without ACCESS allocations on Stampede2 at TACC.”

This research was published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Resource Provider Institution(s): Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC)
Resources Used: Stampede2
Affiliations: Iowa State University
Funding Agency: NSF
Grant or Allocation Number(s): ATM19001

The science story featured here was enabled by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s ACCESS program, which is supported by National Science Foundation grants #2138259, #2138286, #2138307, #2137603, and #2138296.