Widespread Co-Location of Less Frequent and More Intense Daily Precipitation Over Land

Under increasingly variable rainfall, trends toward more intense and less frequent daily-scale precipitation have been identified using regional and global averages. However, it has not been explicitly demonstrated whether and where these trends are co-located, which is important given their potential impacts on land surface processes. Here, using global observation and model-based data sets, we find that trends toward fewer, larger daily precipitation events are common and relatively distributed across terrestrial ecosystems; they are approximately as common as trends toward more, larger daily precipitation events (which underpin increases in annual precipitation totals). Therefore, widespread precipitation intensification is not consistently increasing annual precipitation totals partly because precipitation events, especially of small-to-moderate depths (<10 mm/day), are simultaneously becoming less frequent. Independent of the consequences of changes in mean annual precipitation, these daily-scale precipitation alterations can substantially impact water resource availability, floods, land-atmosphere interactions, crop yields, wildfire fuel loads, and carbon sequestration.