How Unexpected Was the 2021 Pacific Northwest Heatwave?

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 sigma occur with an approximate frequency of one in a hundred thousand years. The historical data does not indicate that the upper tail of temperature is warming faster than the mean; however, future projections for locations with similar climatological moments to the Pacific Northwest do show significant positive trends in the probability of the most extreme events.

Automated summary

The study reveals that the 2021 heatwave in the Pacific Northwest was extremely rare, occurring with a frequency of approximately one in a hundred thousand years. Although historical data does not indicate a faster warming rate in the upper tail of temperature compared to the mean, future projections show a significant positive trend in the probability of the most extreme events for locations with similar climatological characteristics.