Feldman et al. (2026) Widespread Co‐Location of Less Frequent and More Intense Daily Precipitation Over Land

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Geophysical Research Letters
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-03-20
• Authors: Andrew F. Feldman, Xue Feng, Andrew J. Felton, Wade T. Crow, Joel A. Biederman, Alexandra G. Konings, Benjamin Poulter, Shawn Serbin
• DOI: 10.1029/2025gl120745

## Research Groups -

Short Summary

This study investigates the global co-location of trends towards more intense and less frequent daily precipitation events, finding that fewer, larger events are common and distributed across terrestrial ecosystems, often counteracting increases in annual precipitation totals due to simultaneous decreases in small-to-moderate events.

Objective

• To explicitly demonstrate whether and where trends toward more intense and less frequent daily-scale precipitation are co-located globally.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Global terrestrial ecosystems.
• Temporal Scale: Daily-scale precipitation events and their long-term trends affecting annual totals.

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Not specified (used "model-based data sets").
• Data sources: Global observation data and global model-based data sets.

Main Results

• Trends toward fewer, larger daily precipitation events are common and widely distributed across terrestrial ecosystems.
• These trends are approximately as common as trends toward more, larger daily precipitation events, which typically lead to increased annual precipitation totals.
• Widespread precipitation intensification does not consistently increase annual precipitation totals because small-to-moderate precipitation events (depths <10 mm/day) are simultaneously becoming less frequent.

Contributions

• Explicitly demonstrates the co-location and distribution of trends toward more intense and less frequent daily-scale precipitation events globally.
• Reveals that widespread precipitation intensification does not consistently lead to increased annual precipitation totals due to the simultaneous decrease in frequency of small-to-moderate precipitation events.
• Emphasizes the significant impacts of daily-scale precipitation alterations on various land surface processes, independent of changes in mean annual precipitation.

## Funding -

Citation

@article{Feldman2026Widespread,
  author = {Feldman, Andrew F. and Feng, Xue and Felton, Andrew J. and Crow, Wade T. and Biederman, Joel A. and Konings, Alexandra G. and Poulter, Benjamin and Serbin, Shawn},
  title = {Widespread Co‐Location of Less Frequent and More Intense Daily Precipitation Over Land},
  journal = {Geophysical Research Letters},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1029/2025gl120745},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1029/2025gl120745}
}