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Lookup NU author(s): Alexandra Seawell, Professor Hayley Fowler, Dr Stephen BlenkinsopORCiD, Dr Caspar HewettORCiD, Marie Hundausen, Dr Haider AliORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2026 The Author(s). International Journal of Climatology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Meteorological Society.The relationship between extreme rainfall and temperature, known as temperature scaling, is widely used to understand changes in rainfall characteristics under a warming climate. While most previous studies have focussed on fixed-duration intensities or event totals, this study examines how different aspects of the rainfall temporal profile respond to temperature. Specifically, we focus on temperature scaling of total event depth, maximum sub-hourly intensity and measures of profile concentration and loading. Using both sub-hourly rain gauge data across Britain and 10-min output from a convection-permitting climate model (CPM) for present and future climates over southern England and Wales, we analyse short-duration, summer rainstorms. Results show that total rainfall depth increases with temperature, with higher quantiles approaching Clausius-Clapeyron (CC) scaling rates of 6–7%°C−1. However, changes are unevenly distributed within the rainfall event temporal structure. Maximum sub-hourly intensities scale more strongly than total event depth, with upper quantiles reaching 7–11%°C−1, indicating pronounced intensification of short-duration rainfall extremes at high temperatures. Accumulation of 50% of the rainfall event volume was found to occur over a shorter fraction of the storm duration and earlier in the storm duration, indicating rainfall events are more concentrated and more front-loaded at higher temperatures, with both scaling at rates of 1–2%°C−1. These results suggest that future summer rainstorms will not only deliver greater overall rainfall in a warming climate, but also produce more intense and earlier bursts of precipitation, heightening flash flood risk. Disregarding these temporal shifts may lead to underestimation of flood hazards and misrepresentation of climate change impacts in hydrological modelling and infrastructure design.
Author(s): Seawell A, Fowler HJ, Blenkinsop S, Hewett CJM, Herrera RV, Hundhausen M, Ali H
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: International Journal of Climatology
Year: 2026
Pages: Epub ahead of print
Online publication date: 11/05/2026
Acceptance date: 24/04/2026
Date deposited: 26/05/2026
ISSN (print): 0899-8418
ISSN (electronic): 1097-0088
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd
URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.70421
DOI: 10.1002/joc.70421
Data Access Statement: The observed events analysis has been generated using Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service Information 2024, specifically the ERA5-Land hourly data from 1950 to present 2 m air and dewpoint temperatures for Great Britain, available from Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) Climate Data Store (CDS) DOI: 10.24381/cds.e2161bac. Observed rainfall data is available from the Environment Agency, Scottish Environment Protection Agency and Natural Resources Wales, with quality-control scripts available at https://github.com/nclwater/SubHourlyQC. The simulated rainfall, 1.5 m air and dewpoint data have been obtained from the UK Met Office Convex climate model outputs of rainfall, air temperature and specific humidity.
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