AI reveals how a warming climate will intensify NZ’s most extreme downpours

Key points

• Researchers have used generative artificial intelligence to model how extreme rainfall in New Zealand could change as the climate warms. The rarest downpours grow more intense, with larger increases than heavier rain seen more often.
• In a high-emissions future, the daily rainfall of a one-in-100-year event rose by about 9% per degree of warming, compared with about 5.6% for more frequent heavy rain.
• The study also found that warming widens the gap between milder and more severe possible futures, with the most severe outcomes showing substantially larger increases.