Clim Dyn
DOI 10.1007/s00382-017-3586-0
The nonstationary impact of local temperature changes
and ENSO on extreme precipitation at the global scale
Qiaohong Sun1,2 · Chiyuan Miao1,2 · Yuanyuan Qiao1,2 · Qingyun Duan1,2
Received: 11 November 2016 / Accepted: 6 February 2017
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2017
Abstract  The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and
local temperature are important drivers of extreme precipi-
tation. Understanding the impact of ENSO and tempera-
ture on the risk of extreme precipitation over global land
will provide a foundation for risk assessment and climate-
adaptive design of infrastructure in a changing climate. In
this study, nonstationary generalized extreme value dis-
tributions were used to model extreme precipitation over
global land for the period 1979–2015, with ENSO indica-
tor and temperature as covariates. Risk factors were esti-
mated to quantify the contrast between the influence of
different ENSO phases and temperature. The results show
that extreme precipitation is dominated by ENSO over
22% of global land and by temperature over 26% of global
land. With a warming climate, the risk of high-intensity
daily extreme precipitation increases at high latitudes but
decreases in tropical regions. For ENSO, large parts of
North America, southern South America, and southeast-
ern and northeastern China are shown to suffer greater
risk in El Niño years, with more than double the chance of
intense extreme precipitation in El Niño years compared
with La Niña years. Moreover, regions with more intense
Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this
article (doi:10.1007/s00382-017-3586-0) contains supplementary
material, which is available to authorized users.
* Chiyuan Miao
miaocy@vip.sina.com
1
State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes
and Resource Ecology, College of Global Change and Earth
System Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875,
China
2
Joint Center for Global Change Studies, Beijing 100875,
China
 
precipitation are more sensitive to ENSO. Global climate
models were used to investigate the changing relationship
between extreme precipitation and the covariates. The risk
of extreme, high-intensity precipitation increases across
high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere but decreases
in middle and lower latitudes under a warming climate
scenario, and will likely trigger increases in severe flood-
ing and droughts across the globe. However, there is some
uncertainties associated with the influence of ENSO on
predictions of future extreme precipitation, with the spatial
extent and risk varying among the different models.
Keywords  Nonstationarity · Extreme precipitation event ·
Climate change · ENSO
1 Introduction
Climate change due both to anthropogenic activities and
natural variability is now widely accepted and remains a
major concern. Climate change induces changes in the
frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, which
in turn pose a profound threat to social and ecological
systems. Extreme value theory is often used to evalu-
ate risk from hydrological and climatic variables and
provides a foundation for infrastructure management. In
extreme value theory, hydrometeorological variables are
fitted to a theoretical probability distribution function,
which assumes that the probabilistic characteristics of
the variables do not change over time (Xiong et al. 2014).
However, it has been established that this fundamen-
tal assumption of stationarity no longer holds because
of climate change and anthropogenic factors, and tradi-
tional extreme value theory is therefore no longer appli-
cable for climatic risk assessment and mitigation, such
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as water-resource risk assessment, resource management,
and the operation of critical infrastructure (Milly et  al.
2008; Sarhadi et  al. 2016). Therefore, it is essential to
consider the nonstationarity of climatic and hydrological
extremes. Several studies have developed nonstationary
models to depict the changes due to natural variability or
anthropogenic influences. For instance, Sun et al. (2014)
presented a framework for spatio-temporal regional fre-
quency analysis to quantify the effects of climate on the
distribution of hydrometeorological variables. Their
flexible framework adopted different temporal regres-
sion models, with the parameters of the probability dis-
tribution for hydrometeorological events being a func-
tion of climate drivers. Rosner et  al. (2014) introduced
an approach that combined hypothesis testing, risk-based
decision making, and a decision tree to aid flood man-
agement under nonstationary conditions. Li et al. (2015)
developed a nonstationary Gamma distribution with cli-
mate indices as covariates to fit precipitation data and
calculate a nonstationary Standardized Precipitation
Index (SPI) that is more robust than the traditional SPI
calculation. Moreover, some researchers have attempted
to develop multivariate nonstationary methods to investi-
gate how the dependence structure between different indi-
vidual variables is influenced by changing environments.
Jiang et  al. (2015) used a time-varying copula model to
assess the variable dependence structure between two
nonstationary low-flow series collected from neighboring
hydrological gauges. Sarhadi et al. (2016) used a Bayes-
ian, dynamic conditional copula to model the time-vary-
ing dependence structure between mixed continuous and
discrete multiattributes of multidimensional hydromete-
orological phenomena.
Temporal trends in hydroclimatic events can be caused
by many complex factors, including natural variability and
anthropogenic changes in external forcings. On the basis
of nonstationary distribution theory, several studies have
used climate indices as time-varying covariates to detect
effects on hydroclimatic extreme events. For instance,
Zhang et  al. (2010) investigated the influence of large-
scale climate variability on extreme daily precipitation in
winter in North America by using a nonstationary gener-
alized extreme value (GEV) distribution, with indices for
the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Pacific Dec-
adal Oscillation (PDO), and the North Atlantic Oscillation
(NAO) as time-varying predictors. In India, the character-
istics of rainfall that exceeded a high threshold were mod-
eled by nonstationary distributions whose parameters var-
ied with physical covariates like an ENSO index, the global
average temperature, and local mean temperatures (Agi-
lan and Umamahesh 2015; Mondal and Mujumdar 2015).
Whan and Zwiers (2017) used NAO and ENSO indices as
covariates in a nonstationary GEV distribution and found
13
Q. Sun et al.
that they had statistically significant influences on winter
precipitation in North America, both for the observations
and in the regional models (Whan and Zwiers 2017).
Across the world, extreme precipitation triggers flood-
ing, urban waterlogging, and landslides that lead to severe
loss of life and infrastructure. The occurrence of extreme
precipitation at the global scale is believed to be related to
many factors. Previous studies have revealed that ENSO
is the most influential climate phenomenon affecting the
variability of global precipitation extremes (Dai and Wig-
ley 2000; Sun et al. 2015, 2016). On the other hand, tem-
perature also exerts a significant influence on changes in
regional precipitation, with super Clausius–Clapeyron
(C–C) relationships reported in many regions (Ivancic and
Shaw 2016; Lenderink and Van Meijgaard 2008; Miao
et  al. 2016). In our warming climate, a substantial pro-
portion of current heavy rainfall events over land can be
attributed to the observed increases in temperature (Fis-
cher and Knutti 2015). Understanding the influence of
ENSO and temperature on extreme precipitation is critical
for predicting and managing the impact of floods at global
and regional scales. However, the driving factors for pre-
cipitation variability vary from region to region and it is
unclear which factors are the dominant sources of extreme
precipitation changes. Moreover, some studies suggest
that the ENSO magnitude could change in the future (Cai
et al. 2015; Yun et al. 2016). Consequently, the factors that
dominate extreme precipitation in specific regions may also
change. It is essential to examine the robustness of these
relationships for the sake of future risk assessments and
water-resource management. Therefore, in our study, sta-
tionary and nonstationary GEV distributions were used to
examine changes in extreme precipitation. ENSO and tem-
perature were designated as covariates in the nonstationary
GEV distributions in order to identify which factors drive
extreme precipitation. We plotted the spatial distribution
across global land of the most significant physical driver of
extreme precipitation. Then, risk factor was used to quan-
tify the impact of each covariate on the risk of extreme pre-
cipitation. Furthermore, global climate models were used
to investigate the changing relationships between extreme
precipitation and the covariates, providing a foundation for
risk assessment and climate-adaptive design of flood- and
drought-sensitive infrastructure.
2 Data and methods
2.1 Data
In this study, extreme precipitation was estimated from
the unified gauge-based analysis of global daily precipita-
tion produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
The nonstationary impact of local temperature changes and ENSO on extreme precipitation at…
Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center (Xie
et al. 2010). The dataset was constructed from gauge reports
from over 30,000 stations collected from multiple sources.
Quality control was performed through comparisons with
historical records and independent information from meas-
urements at nearby stations, concurrent radar/satellite
observations, and numerical model forecasts. Orographic
effects were corrected in this dataset and the optimal
interpolation (OI) objective analysis technique was used
to interpolate the dataset. Compared with existing prod-
ucts, the datasets show some improvement in represent-
ing the spatial distribution patterns and temporal changes
of precipitation (Xie et al. 2010). For each year during the
period 1979–2015, the all-day percentile index—defined as
the 90th percentile of all daily precipitation observations
across the year (Zhang et al. 2001; Hundecha and Bardossy
2005)—was calculated for global land surfaces as an indi-
cation of extreme precipitation events. ENSO signals were
represented by the monthly Niño 3.4 index, taken from the
Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) Working Group
on Surface Pressure (WG-SP) (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/
psd/gcos_wgsp/Timeseries). Data on local changes in tem-
perature were extracted from the GHCN_CAMS Gridded
2  m Temperature (Land) dataset, which is a high resolu-
tion (0.5°  ×  0.5°) dataset of global land surface tempera-
tures from 1948 to the near present (Fan and van den Dool
2008). The GHCN_CAMS temperature dataset uses the
station observation from the Global Historical Climatol-
ogy Network version 2 and the Climate Anomaly Monitor-
ing System and applies the anomaly interpolation approach
with spatially and temporally varying temperature lapse
rates derived from the observation-based reanalysis for top-
ographic adjustment (Fan and van den Dool 2008). Com-
pared with other datasets, the GHCN_CAMS temperature
analysis is reasonably good and captures most general tem-
poral and spatial features in the observed climatology and
anomaly fields over both regional and global domains.
Five global climate models from the Inter-Sectoral
Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP) climate
dataset, including GFDL-ESM2M, HadGEM2-ES, IPSL-
CM5A-LR, MIROC-ESM-CHEM, and NorESM1-M, were
utilized to estimate the changing relationships between
extreme precipitation and the covariates. The ISI-MIP cli-
mate dataset covers the period from 1960 to 2099 on a hor-
izontal grid at a resolution of 0.5° × 0.5°. We selected five
ISI-MIP models rather than the models in Coupled Model
Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) for three main
reasons. First, the ISI-MIP data are bias-corrected to ensure
long-term statistical agreement with the observation-based
forcing data over the period 1960–1999. Second, the pro-
jected absolute trends in temperature and relative trends in
precipitation and all other variables are preserved by the
bias-correction method, which was developed specifically
for this project and ensures the climate sensitivities of the
climate models are retained (Dankers et  al. 2014; War-
szawski et  al. 2014). Third, the ISI-MIP model data are
downscaled to the same spatial resolution. The ISI-MIP
data have been used for many impact projections, such
as effects on agriculture (Rosenzweig et  al. 2014), water
scarcity (Schewe et  al. 2014), and drought and flood risk
(Prudhomme et  al. 2014) at different projected levels of
global warming. In this study, model projections under the
RCP4.5 scenario were used for the period 2016–2050.
2.2 Methods
The extreme precipitation events were fitted with both sta-
tionary and nonstationary GEV distributions. We use M0
to denote stationary distributions without covariates. First,
the Kolmogorov–Smirnov (K–S) test (Massey 1951) was
applied to assess whether the GEV distribution was appro-
priate for the extreme precipitation series at each grid loca-
tion. Grid locations that failed the K–S test were removed
from this study. Temperature and ENSO indices were
used as covariates in the nonstationary GEV distributions,
referred to as M1 and M2, respectively. The GEV distribu-
tions include three parameters: the location (μ), the scale
(σ), and the shape (ξ). For the nonstationary models, we
assessed the influence of temperature and ENSO by fitting
models with a covariate for the location parameter only.
The location parameter varies linearly with the covariate,
as follows:
𝜇 = 𝛽 0 + 𝛽1 x (1)
where x is the covariate value and 𝛽0 and 𝛽1 are the intercept
and regression coefficients for the corresponding covari-
ate. In this study, The Akaike Information Criterion (AIC)
(Akaike 1974) was used to identify the best models. The
AIC is expressed as follows:
(
RSS
)
AIC = n log + 2m (2)
n
where n is the sample size, m is the number of parameters,
and RSS is the residual sum of squares. The smaller the
AIC value, the better the goodness-of-fit of the models.
Then, we compared the estimated likelihood (probabil-
ity) of extreme precipitation during different ENSO and
temperature phases. For this purpose, we used the concept
of risk factor to quantify the influence of the covariates, as
in Zhang et al. (2010). The risk factor is defined as follows:
P(E� |E)
Risk factor = (3)
P(E)
where E represents the specific events in a given covari-
ate phase and P(E) is the probability of these events. In our
study, E indicates extreme precipitation events in El Niño
13

phases (for ENSO) or cold years (for temperature). E′ rep-
resents the given events conditioned on the La Niña phases
and warm years. The return period is defined as the average
elapsed time or mean interarrival time between occurrences
of critical events; a 20-year return level indicates an event
magnitude that occurs on average once every 20 years. We
chose a 20-year return level for extreme precipitation (E20)
for the given ENSO and temperature phases, and P(E20)
was thus equal to 0.05. P(E′|E20) is the occurrence prob-
ability of extreme precipitation at the 20-year return level,
conditional on the opposite covariate phase. For the nonsta-
tionary ENSO models, P(E) is P(El) and El20 is the 20-year
return level for extreme precipitation under the strongest
El Niño conditions, corresponding to the GEV param-
eters when the covariate is equal to the highest Niño 3.4
value on record. We then estimated the probability of this
20-year return value conditional on a strong La Niña, that
is, under the GEV distribution with parameters correspond-
ing to the lowest Niño 3.4 value; the probability P(E′|E20)
can therefore be expressed as P(La|El20). This probability
P(La|El20) is then divided by the nominal probability 0.05
and is termed the La Niña risk factor. In the nonstation-
ary local-temperature models, P(E) is P(Cold), the 20-year
return level for extreme precipitation under the coldest tem-
perature conditions, in which the covariate is equal to the
lowest annual mean temperature value during the period
1979–2015, and P(E′|E20) is the occurrence probability of
extreme precipitation at the 20-year return level during the
coldest years, conditional on the warmest year (when the
annual mean temperature reached the highest value during
the observed period), expressed as P(Warm|Cold20).
The extRemes package for the open-source statistical
programming language R was used to obtain the nonsta-
tionary models.
Fig. 1  Global distribution of Global distribution of statistical models that best fit extreme precipitation
statistical models that best fit
extreme precipitation (90th
percentile precipitation) for the
period 1979–2015 period. M0 60°N
stationary model, M1 non-
stationary local-temperature
model, M2 nonstationary ENSO 30°N
model
0
22%
M2
26%
30°S M1
M0
52%
120°W
13
Q. Sun et al.
3 Results
3.1 The observed impact of ENSO and temperature
on extreme precipitation
Figure  1 shows the global distribution of the models that
best fit extreme precipitation during the period 1979–2015,
as determined by the AIC. For extreme precipitation, large
areas are dominated by stationary models, accounting for
52% of the global land surface. The spatial distribution of
areas in which ENSO is the most significant physical covar-
iate is relatively uniform, and covers 22% of the global land
surface. These regions are mainly concentrated in southern
North America, northern South America, eastern Australia,
large parts of Southeast Asia, and various grid locations
scattered across Asia and Africa. This pattern essentially
matches corresponding regions detected in previous studies
(Sun et al. 2016). Local mean temperature is the most sig-
nificant covariate over 26% of global land, covering large
parts of Asia, western North America, Greenland, southern
Africa, and central and western Australia. This indicates
that extreme precipitation in these regions has been more
severely affected by global warming in recent decades.
For instance, the Greenland ice streams are undergoing
dynamic thinning owing to regional warming (Khan et al.
2014), which alters the hydrological cycles.
We used the concept of the risk factor to quantify the
risk of occurrence of extreme precipitation under different
ENSO phases. The results show regional characteristics,
and risk of extreme precipitation is quite different under the
two extreme ENSO phases. In a very large portion of north-
ern South America, Southeast Asia, Russia, and southern
Africa, the risk factor is greater than 2 (Fig. 2a), indicating
that the likelihood of an El Niño 20-year event under La
Niña conditions is enhanced. Extreme daily precipitation
that occurs once in every 20  years during El Niño years
60°W 0 60°E 120°E
The nonstationary impact of local temperature changes and ENSO on extreme precipitation at…

Fig. 2  Estimated impact of 15
ENSO on the probability of (a)
extreme precipitation at the
60°N
20-year return level. a The
spatial distribution of risk-factor
values, representing the prob- 10
30°N
ability of an El Niño 20-year
precipitation event occurring
under La Niña conditions.
0
When the risk factor was greater
than 1, risk was increased, and 5
vice versa; b Histogram of
30°S
global risk factors; c Compari-
son of the 20-year return levels
for El Niño and La Niña years,
0
according to the risk factor. Risk 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E
factor = P(La|El20)/P(El20)

100 200 300 400 500

10000
(b) (c)

Extreme precipitation
8000 Risk<0.5 Risk>2
La Niña
El Niño
6000
Frequency

4000

2000

400
100

300
200
10 15

400

300

200

100
0 5
Risk Frequency Frequency

is more than twice as likely to occur during the strongest
La Niña years in these regions. The large range of risk fac-
tors suggests that the ENSO effect varies substantially by
region (Fig. 2a, b). The risk factor is estimated to be greater
than 5 in South America and Southeast Asia. A composite
analysis comparing the difference between the average of
the five strongest La Niña and El Niño years shows simi-
lar results: in South America and Southeast Asia, the val-
ues for extreme precipitation in La Niña years tend to be
higher than the values in El Niño years (Fig. S1a). How-
ever, in large parts of North America, southeastern China,
and western South America, there is a reduced probability
of extreme precipitation occurring in La Niña years, with
risk factors for an El Niño 20-year event during La Niña
years lower than 0.5. In addition, in the regions with risk
factor < 0.5, high intensity extremes precipitation occurs
more frequently in El Niño years. In the regions with the
risk factor > 2, high intensity extreme precipitation occurs
more frequently in La Niño years (Fig. 2c). The occurrence
of high-intensity precipitation events is sensitive to the
alternation of ENSO phases.
In the context of global warming, temperatures have
increased over large portions of global land in recent dec-
ades. We derived trends in the 20-year return level for
extreme precipitation from nonstationary models with
temperature as a covariate. The trends are spatially het-
erogeneous, with the change rates varying from region
to region (Fig.  3b). For instance, northwest China and
high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere experience
distinct increases with change rates of up to 0.2  mm/
yr over the period 1979–2015, but large parts of North
America, Africa, Europe, and central Australia expe-
rience decreases of up to 0.4  mm/yr. The risk factor is
greater than 5 in high latitudes in the Northern Hemi-
sphere and in northwest of China, indicating the likeli-
hood of extreme precipitation increases in a warming
climate in these regions. Precipitation events that occur
once every 20 years during the coldest years occur more
than ten times as often during the warmest years at vari-
ous grid locations scattered in central Russia. In contrast,
the likelihood of extreme precipitation events tends to
be reduced under warm conditions for large parts of the
middle latitudes, covering Europe, North America, cen-
tral Asia, southern Africa, and southern Australia. The
composite analysis shows that extreme precipitation has
a positive sign over high latitudes in the Northern Hemi-
sphere when the warm phase is compared the cold phase,
but a negative sign in large parts of the tropical regions
(Fig. S1b).

13
 Q. Sun et al.

Fig. 3  Estimated impact of 0.1

local temperature on the prob-
ability of extreme precipitation 60°N
at the 20-year return level. a
0.05
Trends in temperature (°C/yr) 30°N
during the period 1979–2015; 0
b Trends in the 20-year return 0
levels for extreme precipita-
-0.05
tion based on the nonstationary 30°S
local-temperature model over (a)
the period 1979–2015 (mm/ -0.1
yr); c Distribution of risk-factor 120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E
values, representing the prob- 0.4
ability of a coldest-temperature
60°N
20-year extreme precipitation 0.2
event occurring under warmest
30°N
temperature conditions. Risk
factor = P(Warm|Cold20)/P 0
0
(Cold20)
-0.2
30°S
(b)
-0.4
120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E
15

60°N
10
30°N

0
5
30°S
(c)
0
120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E

3.2 The risk of extreme precipitation under different
future climatic conditions
Figure 4 shows the dominant factors underlying extreme
precipitation for the period 2016–2050 under the RCP4.5
scenario, based on the global climate models. The area
for which the stationary model is the best model for
extreme precipitation events is predicted to reduce in the
future. For more than 50% of grid locations, it is not valid
to assess the risk of extreme events on the basis of the
traditional assumption of stationarity. In contrast, temper-
ature is the dominant factor affecting extreme precipita-
tion in most regions: M1 dominates across global land in
all models except the HadGEM2-ES model. Temperature
is projected to be the dominant physical covariate across
large portions of South America, Africa, Australia, south-
eastern North America, and high and middle latitudes of
Asia, covering more than 38% of global grid locations
in the GFDL-ESM2M, IPSL-CM5A-LR, MIROC-ESM-
CHEM, and NorESM-M models. The effect of ENSO
is predicted to be robust and the M2 model is domi-
nant in Southeast Asia, the coast of Australia, and some
grid locations in North America. The GFDL-ESM2M,
MIROC-ESM-CHEM, and NorESM-M models show that
the influence of ENSO on extreme precipitation is also
predicted to be significant in southern India.
The spatial pattern of ENSO risk factors varies
among the different models. For the GFDL-ESM2M
and NorESM1-M models, the overall spatial pattern is
similar to the results based on observations (Fig.  2): the
risk factor is high over northern South America, South-
east Asia, and eastern Russia for the period 2016–2050.
The projected risk factor in these regions is greater than
12, indicating the increased likelihood of an El Niño
20-year precipitation event under La Niña conditions in
the RCP4.5 scenario. In the GFDL-ESM2M, HadGEM2-
ES, and NorESM1-M models, a decreased likelihood of
El Niño extreme precipitation under La Niña conditions
is found in the central United States, central Asia, and
southern Europe. There is some uncertainty about the
influence of ENSO on extreme precipitation in coastal
Australia: the GFDL-ESM2M and NorESM1-M mod-
els exhibit an increase in risk factor for this region but
the HadGEM2-ES and IPSL-CM5A-LR results show a
decreased risk (Fig.  5). In general, the affected regions
and contrast between ENSO phases are smaller in the

13
The nonstationary impact of local temperature changes and ENSO on extreme precipitation at…

(a) GFDL-ESM2M (b) HadGEM2-ES

60°N 60°N

30°N 30°N

0 0
21% 18%
19%
30°S 30% 30°S
49% 63%

(c) IPSL-CM5A-LR (d) MIROC-ESM-CHEM

60°N 60°N

30°N 30°N

0 0
15% 11%
41% 51%
30°S 30°S
44% 37%
120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E
(e) NorESM1-M

60°N

30°N M0: stationary model

M1: nonstationary model for local temperature
0 M2: nonstationary model for ENSO
25%
30°S
37% 38%
120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E

Fig. 4  Global distribution of statistical models that best fit extreme precipitation (90th percentile of precipitation) for the period 2016–2050
under the RCP4.5 scenario. M0 stationary model, M1 nonstationary model for local temperature, M2 nonstationary model for ENSO

MIROC-ESM-CHEM and IPSL-CM5A-LR models than
the other models.
Accompanying the extension of regions predominantly
influenced by temperature (Fig. 4), the influence of temper-
ature on risk factor is also altered in the future. Under the
RCP4.5 scenario, we find that extreme precipitation events
in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere were 5 to
12 times more likely to occur in the warmest year in the
period 2016–2050, which is higher than the risk factors for
the observed period (1979–2015) (Fig.  6). Increased risk
factors are also detected in various grid locations in tropi-
cal regions, including western Africa, Southeast Asia, and
northwestern South America. Compared with the results
from the 1979–2015 period, regions in which extreme pre-
cipitation is affected by the local temperature extend to
large parts of South America in the future scenario, with
decreased risk of extreme precipitation in the warmest year.
In the MIROC-ESM-CHEM and NorESM1-M models, the
affected regions stretch to large inland areas in Australia.
For large sections of coastal Australia, the influence of tem-
perature on the risk of extreme precipitation is predicted
to be stronger than the influence of ENSO. In a warming
climate, the spatial patterns of risk factors based on M1
nonstationary GEV distributions suggests that high latitude
regions will tend to become wetter but low and middle lati-
tude regions will tend to become drier.
4 Discussion and conclusions
We presented here an examination of the influence of
ENSO and local temperature on extreme precipitation over
global land for the period 1979–2015, based on nonstation-
ary GEV distributions. ENSO and temperature were covar-
iates in the nonstationary models, and risk factor was used
to quantify the influence of different ENSO phases and
temperature. The results show that the risk of daily extreme
precipitation intensity (90th percentile of daily precipita-
tion) increases at high latitudes but decreases in tropical
regions under a warming climate. This finding contradicts
previous studies that reported a C–C relation or even a
super C–C relation in many regions, including the United
States (Shaw et  al. 2011), China (Miao et  al. 2016), and
Australia (Hardwick Jones et  al. 2010). Min et  al. (2011)

13

(a) GFDL-ESM2M
60°N
30°N
0 0
30°S
(c) IPSL-CM5A-LR
60°N
30°N
0 0
30°S
(e) NorESM1-M
60°N
30°N
0
30°S
120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E
Fig. 5  Estimated impact of ENSO on the probability of extreme pre-
cipitation at the 20-year return level (90th percentile of precipitation)
for the different models under the RCP4.5 scenario. The plots show
the spatial distribution of risk-factor values, representing the prob-
and Westra et al. (2013) observed intensification of annual
maximum precipitation with global warming in nearly two-
thirds of data-covered global land. However, the decreased
risk of extreme precipitation that we detected over large
parts of tropical regions in warm years indicates that the
relationship between extreme precipitation and temperature
is likely to be complex; the C–C relation alone may not be
sufficient to explain the relationship at the daily precipita-
tion timescale at lower latitudes. The duration of precipita-
tion events (Panthou et al. 2014) and decreases in moisture
availability above 24 °C (Maeda et  al. 2012; Utsumi et  al.
2011; Wasko et  al. 2015) are also related to the relation-
ship between temperature and precipitation intensity and
contribute to the decrease in extreme precipitation with
increases in temperature in tropical regions. In addition,
the precipitation percentile affects the relationship between
extreme precipitation and temperature (Hardwick Jones
et  al. 2010). We chose the 90th percentile of precipita-
tion rather than maximum precipitation as the measure
of extreme precipitation intensity in this study, and this
13
Q. Sun et al.
(b) HadGEM2-ES
60°N
30°N
30°S
(d) MIROC-ESM-CHEM
60°N
30°N
30°S
120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E
0 5 10 15
ability of an El Niño 20-year precipitation event occurring under La
Niña conditions. When the risk factor was greater than 1, risk was
increased, and vice versa
may explain why our results contradict those of Min et al.
(2011). Further analysis should be conducted to achieve a
comprehensive understanding of the relationship between
temperature and precipitation intensity in terms of various
dynamic and thermodynamic factors.
Precipitation across large parts of global land is sen-
sitive to ENSO variations. ENSO affects not only aver-
age precipitation but also extreme precipitation. For the
period 1979–2015, we find that variability in the inten-
sity of extreme precipitation is dominated by ENSO
over approximate 22% of grid locations, consistent with
previous studies (Dai and Wigley 2000; Whan and Zwi-
ers 2017). We investigated the differences in extreme
precipitation during different ENSO phases. In El Niño
years, large parts of North America, southern South
America, and southeastern and northeastern China suf-
fer from an increased risk of intense extreme precipita-
tion that is double that observed for the La Niña years,
when the likelihood of extreme precipitation over coastal
Australia, Southeast Asia, southern Africa, and northern
The nonstationary impact of local temperature changes and ENSO on extreme precipitation at…
(a) GFDL-ESM2M
60°N
30°N
0 0
30°S
(c) IPSL-CM5A-LR
60°N
30°N
0 0
30°S
(e) NorESM1-M
60°N
30°N
0
30°S
120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E
Fig. 6  Estimated impact of local temperature on the probability of
extreme precipitation at the 20-year return level (90th percentile pre-
cipitation) for the different models under the RCP4.5 scenario. The
plots show the distribution of risk-factor values, representing the
South America is enhanced. Furthermore, regions with
more intense precipitation are more sensitive to ENSO
(Fig.  2c), making the alternation of drought and floods
more frequent. Previous studies have shown that char-
acteristics of drought are also linked to ENSO and tem-
perature. The occurrence and evolution of drought can
be triggered by anomalous tropical sea surface tempera-
tures, with La Niña conditions causing drought in North-
ern America but El Niño conditions causing drought
in eastern China (Dai 2011). A general picture of how
drought conditions are influenced by ENSO is provided
by Sun et  al. (2016), with the overall effects similar to
those for extreme precipitation. As temperatures change,
the occurrence of temperature extremes tends to increase,
leading to greater probability that droughts and heat
waves will occur simultaneously, thereby intensifying
drought severity (AghaKouchak et  al. 2014; Trenberth
et al. 2013). Drought and flood prediction in these areas
may be improved by incorporating physical processes
attributed to ENSO and temperature; better-informed and
(b) HadGEM2-ES
60°N
30°N
30°S
(d) MIROC-ESM-CHEM
60°N
30°N
30°S
120°W 60°W 0 60°E 120°E
0 5 10 15
probability of a cold-temperature 20-year extreme precipitation event
occurring under warm temperature conditions. Risk factor = P(Warm|
Cold20)/P(Cold20)
climate-adaptive design of flood- and drought- sensitive
infrastructure will help to reduce losses from meteoro-
logical disasters.
Through global climate models under the RCP4.5 sce-
nario, we investigated the dominant factors underlying
predicted extreme precipitation intensity for the period
2016–2050. The observed relationship between extreme
precipitation and temperature is likely to become more
robust in the future, with most models predicting the
extension of regions where extreme precipitation is domi-
nated by temperature and larger contrast with temperature
changes. The risk of extreme, high-intensity, precipitation
increases across high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere,
becoming 5–12 times more likely under the warmest years,
while the risk factor decreases in middle and lower lati-
tudes under a warming climate. These results suggest that
a warming climate will trigger more severe floods and
droughts over global land. The observed decrease in the
extreme daily precipitation intensity over tropical regions
with higher temperatures (Maeda et  al. 2012) is predicted
13

to become more distinct in the first half of the twenty-first
century. Furthermore, satellite observations have identi-
fied significant land greening in the northern extratropical
latitudes during the past three decades, an effect mainly
attributed to anthropogenic climate change (Mao et  al.
2016; Zhu et  al. 2016). The compounding of warmer and
wetter conditions over the northern extratropical latitudes
will be more conducive to additional land greening. How-
ever, there is uncertainty associated with the influence
of ENSO and local temperature on projection of extreme
precipitation because the spatial extent and risk vary with
the different models. First, global climate models gener-
ally have relatively coarse resolution and systematic errors.
Precipitation is of the local convective and large-scale or
stratiform forms, which tend to be highly dependent on
the parameterization (Sun et  al. 2006). Moist convection
schemes and parameterization of unresolved physical pro-
cesses are heavily involved in the simulation of precipita-
tion over global land, especially in tropical regions, and this
induces uncertainties in the magnitude and risk of extreme
precipitation. Second, there are many difficulties in project-
ing ENSO owing to its complex mechanisms and intricate
linkage to large atmospheric circulation. Models generally
show some discrepancies in their simulation of ENSO,
such as less-frequent warm ENSO periods, biases in dura-
tion, and weaker ENSO asymmetry, which can result in
biases in related zonal wind stress, precipitation, and sub-
surface temperature predictions (Weare 2013; Zhang and
Sun 2014). Furthermore, trends in ENSO variance with
respect to global warming vary among different models:
ENSO variance increases in some models but decreases
in other models, such as an increase in HadGEM2-ES (Hu
et  al. 2014). Therefore, the inter-decadal modulations of
ENSO teleconnections differ among models and contrib-
ute to the large uncertainty. Third, model projections are
inherently uncertain owing to unknown variability in the
natural climate and emissions in the future. This contrib-
utes substantial uncertainty to predictions of temperature
and precipitation trends over land. Future studies should
take simulations from more models and experiments into
consideration to reduce the uncertainty. In addition, uncer-
tainties also exist in the observation. We used gauge-based
precipitation and temperature datasets in this study. How-
ever, gauge measurements do not provide complete areal
coverage and are not available over unpopulated land areas.
The changing station networks, uneven gauge distribu-
tion, and treatment of changing data coverage over time
affect the observation uncertainties, especially in moun-
tain regions (Hegerl et  al. 2015). With the development
of satellite technique, satellite-derived datasets with finer
temporal and spatial resolution and more spatially homo-
geneous and temporally complete coverage of large areas of
the globe have been released. These offer great potential for
13
Q. Sun et al.
measurements of precipitation and temperature, and will
provide data support for future studies of climate change.
In this study, the ENSO and local temperature were
taken to be the main factors influencing extreme precipi-
tation over global land; however, precipitation variability
is complex and may be controlled by other factors. For
instance, precipitation and temperature variability over
large parts of Europe and Greenland may be affected by
the NAO through its influence on the Atlantic meridional
overturning circulation and ocean heat transport (Delworth
et  al. 2016). Precipitation over North America may be
modulated by the PDO (Hu and Huang 2009). Local topo-
graphic heterogeneity could also affect extreme precipita-
tion through influences on radiation and airflow (Liu et al.
2014). Further studies that take more factors into consid-
eration are essential.
Acknowledgements  This research was supported by the National
Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41622101; No. 91547118),
and the State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and
Resource Ecology. We are also grateful to the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center
(CPC) for providing the observed global daily precipitation dataset, to
NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) for providing the
gridded 2 m temperature dataset, and to the Global Climate Observ-
ing System Working Group on Surface Pressure (WG-SP) for provid-
ing the monthly Niño 3.4 index.
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 Climate Dynamics
Supporting Information for
The nonstationary impact of local temperature changes and ENSO on extreme
precipitation at the global scale
Qiaohong Sun1,2, Chiyuan Miao1,2, Yuanyuan Qiao1,2, Qingyun Duan1,2
1
State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, College of Global

Change and Earth System Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
2
Joint Center for Global Change Studies, Beijing 100875, China

Contents of this file

Figure S1

Figure S1. Composite analysis of extreme precipitation during different ENSO and
temperature phases. (a) The difference between the five strongest La Niña years (with the
lowest Niño 3.4 values) and the five strongest E1 Niño years (with the highest of Niño 3.4
values). (b) The difference between the warm phase (with the highest local temperature
values) and the cold phase (with the lowest local temperature values).