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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Hayley Fowler, Dr Selma GuerreiroORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2026. The Author(s). Changes to seasonal precipitation can have dynamical and thermodynamic origins and disentangling these processes is challenging. To evaluate observed changes in UK winter precipitation from 1901 to 2023, we separate the signal into dynamical and non-dynamical components by applying a dynamical adjustment using European weather patterns. We find long-term changes in the non-dynamical component are tied to temperature, with a 7% increase in UK winter precipitation per degree of local warming, in line with expected increases in atmospheric moisture content. We find this significant increase in non-dynamical winter precipitation is attributable to anthropogenic forcing according to the CMIP6 global climate model simulations. Notably, most CMIP6 models produce a much weaker intensification of the non-dynamic (thermodynamic) component relative to observations, with a model ensemble mean scaling of 4% °C−1. The results show that projections based on CMIP6 models could underestimate the scaling of precipitation with temperature and increase in flood risk.
Author(s): Carruthers JG, Fowler HJ, Bannister D, Guerreiro SB
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Geophysical Research Letters
Year: 2026
Volume: 53
Issue: 3
Print publication date: 16/02/2026
Online publication date: 04/02/2026
Acceptance date: 23/01/2026
Date deposited: 16/02/2026
ISSN (print): 0094-8276
ISSN (electronic): 1944-8007
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Inc.
URL: https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL118201
DOI: 10.1029/2025GL118201
Data Access Statement: HadUK precipitation and temperature, as well as CMIP6 model data used in this study is available at the Ceda Archive (http://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/4dc8450d889a491ebb20e724debe2dfb, https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/b96ce180077f4810abc4eef0e48901d9/). ERA5 sea level pressure data used in this study is available at the Climate Data Store (Hersbach et al., 2023). UK Met Office WP are available for a limited timeseries (Neal, 2022). NAO, SCAN and EA indices are available at: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/teledoc/telecontents.shtml.
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