Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

Intense coastal rainfall in the Netherlands in response to high sea surface temperatures: analysis of the event of August 2006 from the perspective of a changing climate

  • Published:
Climate Dynamics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

August 2006 was an exceptionally wet month in the Netherlands, in particular near the coast where rainfall amounts exceeded 300% of the climatological mean. August 2006 was preceded by an extremely warm July with a monthly mean temperature of almost 1°C higher than recorded in any other summer month in the period 1901–2006. This had resulted in very high sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the North Sea at the end of July. In this paper the contribution of high SSTs to the high rainfall amounts is investigated. In the first part of this study, this is done by analyzing short-term integrations with a regional climate model (RACMO2) operated at 6 km resolution, which are different in the prescribed values of the SSTs. In the second part of the paper the influence of SSTs on rainfall is analyzed statistically on the basis of daily observations in the Netherlands during the period 1958–2006. The results from both the statistical analysis as well as the model integrations show a significant influence of SSTs on precipitation. This influence is particularly strong in the coastal area, that is, less than 30–50 km from the coastline. With favorable atmospheric flow conditions, the analyzed dependency is about +15% increase per degree temperature rise, thereby exceeding the Clausius–Clapeyron relation—which is often used as a temperature related constraint on changes in extreme precipitation—by approximately a factor of two. It is shown that the coastal area has consistently become wetter compared to the inland area since the 1950s. This finding is in agreement with the rather strong observed trend in SST over the same period and the dependencies of rainfall on SST reported in this study.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Allen MR, Ingram WJ (2002) Constraints on the future changes in climate and the hydrological cycle. Nature 419:224–232

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benestad RE, Melsom A (2002) Is there a link between unusually wet autumns in southeastern Norway and sea-surface temperature anomalies? Clim Res 23:67–79

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Christensen JH, Christensen OB (2003) Climate modelling: severe summertime flooding in Europe. Nature 421:805–806

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Christensen JH, Carter TR, Rummukainen M, Amanatidis G (2007a) Evaluating the performance and utility of regional climate models: the PRUDENCE project. Clim Change 81:1–6. doi:10.1007/s10584-006-9211-6

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Christensen JH, Hewitson B, Busuioc A, Chen A, Gao X, Held I, Jones R, Kolli RK, Kwon W-T, Laprise R, Magaña Rueda V, Mearns L, Menéndez CG, Räisänen J, Rinke A, Sarr A, Whetton P (2007b) Regional climate projections. In: Solomon S, Qin D, Manning M, Chen Z, Marquis M, Averyt KB, Tignor M, Miller HL (eds) Climate change 2007: the physical science basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Frei C, Schöll R, Fukutome S, Schmidli J, Vidale PL (2006) Future change of precipitation extremes in Europe: intercomparison of scenarios from regional climate models. J Geophys Res 111:D06105. doi:10.1029/2005JD005965

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Groisman PYa, Knight RW, Easterling DR, Karl TR, Hegerl GC, Razuvaev VN (2005) Trends in intense precipitation in the climate record. J Clim 18:1326–1350

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guichard F, Petch JC, Redelsperger J-L, Bechtold P, Chaboureau J-P, Cheinet S, Grabowski W, Grenier H, Jones CG, Köhler M, Piriou J-M, Tailleux R, Tomasini M (2004) Modelling the diurnal cycle of deep precipitating convection over land with cloud-resolving models and single-column models. Q J Roy Meteor Soc 130:3139–3172

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Held IM, Soden BJ (2006) Robust responses of the hydrological cycle to global warming. J Clim 19:5686–5699

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hewitt CD, Griggs DJ (2004) Ensembles-based predictions of climate changes and their impacts (ENSEMBLES). EOS 85:566

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van den Hurk BJJM, Klein Tank AMG, Lenderink G, Van Ulden AP, Van Oldenborgh GJ, Katsman CA, Van den Brink HW, Keller F, Bessembinder JJF, Burgers G, Komen GJ, Hazeleger W, Drijfhout SS (2006) KNMI Climate Change Scenarios 2006 for the Netherlands. KNMI-publication WR-2006-01, pp 82. Available at http://www.knmi.nl/climatescenarios/

  • Kjellström E, Ruosteenoja K (2007) Present-day and future precipitation in the Baltic Sea region as simulated in a suite of regional climate models. Clim Change 81:281–291. doi:10.1007/s10584-006-9219-y

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kjellström E, Döscher R, Markus Meier HE (2005) Atmospheric response to different sea surface temperatures in the Baltic Sea: coupled versus uncoupled regional climate model experiments. Nord Hydrol 36:397–409

    Google Scholar 

  • Lebeaupin C, Ducrocq V, Giordani H (2006) Sensitivity of torrential rain events to the sea surface temperature based on high-resolution numerical forecasts. J Geophys Res 111:D12110. doi:10.1029/2005JD006541

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lenderink G, Van den Hurk B, Van Meijgaard E, Van Ulden A, Cuijpers H (2003) Simulation of present-day climate in RACMO2: first results and model developments. KNMI technical report, TR-252

  • Lenderink G, Van Ulden A, Van den Hurk B, Keller F (2007) A study on combining global and regional climate model results for generating climate scenarios of temperature and precipitation for the Netherlands. Clim Dyn. doi:10.1007/s00382-008-0366-x

  • Messager C, Gallée, Brasseur O (2004) Precipitation sensitivity to regional SST in a regional climate in a regional climate simulation during the West African monsoon for two dry years. Clim Dyn 22:249–266. doi:10.1007/s00382-003-0381-x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pall P, Allen MR, Stone DA (2007) Testing the Clausius–Capeyron constraint on changes in extreme precipitation under CO2 warming. Clim Dyn 28:351–363. doi:10.1007/s00382-006-0180-2

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Persson POG, Neiman PJ, Walter B, Bao J-W, Ralph FM (2005) Contributions from California coastal-zone surface fluxes to heavy coastal precipitation: a CALJET Case Study during the strong El Niño of 1998. Mon Weather Rev 133:1175–1198

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Räisänen J, Hansson U, Ullerstig A, Döscher R, Graham L, Jones C, Meier H, Samuelsson P, Willén U (2004) European climate in the late twenty-first century: regional simulations with two driving global models and two forcing secnarios. Clim Dyn 22:13–31. doi:10.1007/s00382-003-0365-x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rayner NA, Brohan P, Parker DE, Folland CK, Kennedy JJ, Vanicek M, Ansell T, Tett SFB (2006) Improved analyses of changes and uncertainties in sea surface temperature measured in situ since the mid-nineteenth century: the HadSST2 data set. J Clim 19(3):446–469

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rowell DP (2003) The impact of Mediterranean SSTs on the Sahelian rainfall season. J Clim 16:849–862

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Semmler T, Jacob D (2004) Modeling extreme precipitation events—a climate change simulation for Europe. Glob Planet Change 44:119–127

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Seneviratne SI, Pal JS, Eltahir EAB, Schär C (2002) Summer dryness in a warmer climate: a process study with a regional climate model. Clim Dyn 20:69–85

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Somot S, Sevault F, Déqué M, Crépon M (2007) 21st Century climate change scenario for the Mediterranean using a coupled atmosphere–ocean regional climate model. Glob Planet Change. doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2007.10.003

  • Trenberth KE, Dai A, Rasmussen RM, Parsons DB (2003) The changing character of precipitation. Bull Am Meteor Soc 1205–1217

  • Uppala SM, 45 co-autors (2005) The ERA-40 re-analysis. Q J Roy Meteorol Soc 131:2961–3012. doi:10.1256/qj.04.176

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van Ulden AP, Van Oldenborgh GJ (2006) Large-scale atmospheric circulation biases in global climate model simulations and their importance for climate change in Central Europe. Atmos Chem Phys 6:863–881

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vidale PL, Lüthi D, Wegmann R, Schär C (2007) European summer climate variability in a heterogeneous multi-model ensemble. Clim Change 81:209–232

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Webster PJ, Holland GJ, Curry JA, Chang H-R (2005) Changes in tropical cyclone number, duration, and intensity in a warming environment. 309:1844–1846

  • Yin JH (2005) A consistent poleward shift of the storm tracks in simulations of 21st century climate. Geophys Res Lett 32:L18701. doi:10.1029/2005GL023684

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

We thank Hans Roozekrans for providing the NAOO satellite measurements, and Rudmer Jilderda (KNMI Climate Services Department) for the precipitation measurements. We thank Albert Klein Tank, Aad van Ulden and Bart van den Hurk for valuable comments on this work. This work has been supported by the Dutch Climate Change and Spatial Planning program (BSIK) and by the European FP-6 project ENSEMBLES (GOCE-CT-2003-505539).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to G. Lenderink.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Lenderink, G., van Meijgaard, E. & Selten, F. Intense coastal rainfall in the Netherlands in response to high sea surface temperatures: analysis of the event of August 2006 from the perspective of a changing climate. Clim Dyn 32, 19–33 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-008-0366-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-008-0366-x

Keywords

Navigation