Increasing Risks of Future Compound Climate Extremes With Warming Over Global Land Masses

Compound climate extremes (here referred to compound dry-hot events and compound pluvial-hot events) result in devastating disasters which threaten water-food-energy security. However, in a warming scenario, the risk of occurrence, the quantification of uncertainty, and associated drivers of compound climate extremes-particularly compound pluvial-hot events-have not been fully explored. By leveraging climate model large ensembles, it is revealed that the risk of compound climate extremes is projected to increase 2-3 times over most global land masses in future Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 forcing compared with historical forcing. Increased risks of compound climate extremes are mainly attributed to the changes in temperature and changes in dependence between precipitation and temperature, while the change in precipitation contributing to risk of these two compound climate extremes exhibits approximately spatial complementary. In the warming world, the hot spots of compound dry-hot extremes mainly lie in Europe, South Africa, and the Amazon, while those of compound pluvial-hot extremes mostly lie in the eastern USA, eastern and southern Asia, Australia, and central Africa. These findings help stakeholders and decision makers develop a package of climate change adaptation strategies to manage and mitigate the risk of compound climate extremes.

Automated summary

Compound climate extremes pose a threat to water-food-energy security and their occurrence is projected to increase in a warming scenario. The risk is mainly attributed to changes in temperature and changes in dependence between precipitation and temperature.