The Community Earth System Model (CESM) is widely used for the prediction and understanding of climate variability and change. Accurate simulation of the behavior of near surface air temperature (
The 2021 Pacific Northwest heatwave featured record‐smashing high temperatures, raising questions about whether extremes are changing faster than the mean, and challenging our ability to estimate the probability of the event. Here, we identify and draw on the strong relationship between the climatological higher‐order statistics of temperature (skewness and kurtosis) and the magnitude of extreme events to quantify the likelihood of comparable events using a large climate model ensemble (Community Earth System Model version 2 Large Ensemble [CESM2‐LE]). In general, CESM2 can simulate temperature anomalies as extreme as those observed in 2021, but they are rare: temperature anomalies that exceed 4.5
- Award ID(s):
- 1939988
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10444066
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Volume:
- 49
- Issue:
- 18
- ISSN:
- 0094-8276
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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