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This paper presents a consensus estimate of the changes in oceanic precipitation off the coast of Europe under increasing greenhouse gas emissions. An ensemble of regional climate models (RCMs) and three gauge and satellite-derived observational precipitation datasets are compared. While the fit between the RCMs’ simulation of current climate and the observations shows the consistency of the future-climate projections, uncertainties in both the models and the measurements need to be considered to generate a consensus estimate of the potential changes. Since oceanic precipitation is one of the factors affecting the thermohaline circulation, the feedback mechanisms of the changes in the net influx of freshwater from precipitation are relevant not only for improving oceanic-atmospheric coupled models but also to ascertain the climate signal in a global warming scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we illustrate a new, simple and complementary ground-based methodology to retrieve the vertically resolved atmospheric precipitation intensity through a synergy between measurements from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Micropulse Lidar network (MPLNET), an analytical model solution and ground-based disdrometer measurements. The presented results are obtained at two mid-latitude MPLNET permanent observational sites, located respectively at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, USA, and at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. The methodology is suitable to be applied to existing and/or future lidar/ceilometer networks with the main objective of either providing near real-time (3 h latency) rainfall intensity measurements and/or to validate satellite missions, especially for critical light precipitation (<3 mm h − 1 ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]