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Abstract Climate change is expected to increase the global occurrence and intensity of heatwaves, extreme precipitation, and flash droughts. However, it is not well understood how the compound heatwave, extreme precipitation, and flash drought events will likely change, and how global population, agriculture, and forest will likely be exposed to these compound events under future climate change scenarios. This research uses eight CMIP6 climate models to assess the current and future global compound climate extreme events, as well as population, agriculture, and forestry exposures to these events, under two climate scenarios, Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP), SSP1‐2.6 and SSP5‐8.5 for three time periods: early‐, mid‐, and late‐ 21st century. Climate extremes are derived for heatwaves, extreme precipitation, and flash droughts using locational‐dependent thresholds. We find that compound heatwaves and flash drought events result in the largest increases in exposure of populations, agriculture, and forest lands, under SSP5‐8.5 late‐century projections of sequential heatwaves and flash droughts. Late‐century projections of sequential heatwaves and flash droughts show hot spots of exposure increases in population exposure greater than 50 million person‐events in China, India, and Europe; increases in agriculture land exposures greater than 90 thousand km2‐events in China, South America, and Oceania; and increase in forest land exposure greater than 120 thousand km2‐events in Oceania and South America regions when compared to the historical period. The findings from this study can be potentially useful for informing global climate adaptations.
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Compound Wind and Precipitation Extremes in Global Coastal Regions Under Climate Change
Abstract Compound wind and precipitation (CWP) extreme events can cause a significant increase in socio‐economic loss in coastal regions. This study investigated the potential impact of climate change on CWP events using Coupled Model Intercomparison Project model outputs for the coastal areas impacted by tropical cyclones on a global scale. We identified global hotspots of higher dependence between extreme wind and precipitation events. Under climate change, the results show a substantial increase in precipitation extremes compared to individual wind extreme events. The likelihood of CWP events under climate change indicates an increase (about 40%–50%) in most coastal regions in North Atlantic, East, and South Asia. The results of this study can help to identify hotspot regions under climate change and further assist in minimizing the impact of future disasters in vulnerable coastal areas.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1855374
- PAR ID:
- 10372522
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Volume:
- 49
- Issue:
- 15
- ISSN:
- 0094-8276
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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