SHEP project aims
Aim 1
Quantify observed changes in short duration (hourly to sub-hourly) precipitation extremes over major Australian cities.
Aim 2
Evaluate the ability of convection permitting Regional Climate Models to simulate these short duration precipitation extremes.
Aim 3
Simulate changes in these short duration precipitation extremes due to climate change.
This is a CORDEX endorsed Flagship Pilot Study that uses coordinated, convection permitting, regional climate downscaling experiments to investigate how short duration (hourly to sub-hourly) precipitation extremes have been changing over major Australian and New Zealand cities and how they are projected to change due to global warming.
SHEP will have multiple impacts
- Improved understanding of processes causing changes in SHEP potentially leading to improvements in the model representation of these events.
- Projected future changes in SHEP to inform climate change risk assessments. End users include insurance, national/state risk assessment, infrastructure design, and others.
- Produce new body of knowledge on SHEP changes due to climate change to inform future IPCC reports.
- Prepare/improve models and inform experiment design for high resolution downscaling of CMIP7
Call to Action
SHEP is a collaborative project by an international team of scientists with the interest and skills to contribute to our understanding of how sub-hourly extreme precipitation events will change as the climate changes. We are doing this through the creation of convection permitting climate projections of these events. If you fit this description, and would like to contribute to the project, then contact us and join the project team.