Constraining decadal variability regionally improves near-term projections of hot, cold and dry extremes

Bibliographic Data

ID15550398
AuthorsPaolo De Luca (0000-0002-0416-4622, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, corresponding author), Carlos Delgado‐Torres (0000-0003-1737-4212, Barcelona Supercomputing Center), Rashed Mahmood (0000-0002-3583-2232, Barcelona Supercomputing Center), Margarida Samsó (0000-0003-2868-2755, Barcelona Supercomputing Center), Markus G Donat (0000-0002-0608-7288, Barcelona Supercomputing Center)
Year2023
Volume18
Issue9
Pages094054-094054
Publication date2023-08-24
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironmental Research Letters (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1748-9326 • E-ISSN: 1748-9326
PublisherIOP Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1088/1748-9326/acf389
OpenAlexW4386126379
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited60

Hot, cold and dry meteorological extremes are often linked with severe impacts on the public health, agricultural, energy and environmental sectors. Skillful predictions of such extremes could therefore enable stakeholders to better plan and adapt to future impacts of these events. The intensity, duration and frequency of such extremes are affected by anthropogenic climate change and modulated by different modes of climate variability. Here, we use a large multi-model ensemble from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) and constrain these simulations by sub-selecting those members whose global sea surface temperature anomaly patterns are most similar to observations at a given point in time, thereby phasing in the decadal climate variability with observations. Hot and cold extremes are skillfully predicted over most of the globe, with also a widespread added value from using the constrained ensemble compared to the unconstrained full CMIP6 ensemble. On the other hand, dry extremes only show skill in some regions with results sensitive to the index used. Still, we find skillful predictions and added skill for dry extremes in some regions such as Western North America, Southern central and Eastern Europe, Southeastern Australia, Southern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. We also find that the added skill in the constrained ensemble is due to a combination of improved multi-decadal variations in phase with observed climate extremes and improved representation of long-term changes. Our results demonstrate that constraining decadal variability in climate projections can provide improved estimates of temperature extremes and drought in the next 20 years, which can inform targeted adaptation strategies to near-term climate change

Anomaly (physics · Climate change · Climate extremes · Climate model · Climatology · Coupled model intercomparison project · Forecast skill · Geography · Meteorology · Peninsula · Precipitation · Term (time · Climate variability and models · Environmental Science · Hydrology and Drought Analysis · Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations · Geology

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