Many regions will experience an increase in wet-hot extreme weather. Credit: Earth's Future (2023). DOI: 10.1029/2022EF003466
Key points:
- Under climate change, compound climate extremes will become more frequent, severe, and widespread.
- The risk of wet-hot extremes—combined severe heat and extreme rain—is greater than that of dry-hot extremes.
- Failing to understand the threat of compound wet-hot extremes can have devastating impact on global water, food, and energy security.
In a new study, published in Earth’s Future, climate researchers reported that co-occurring precipitation and heat extremes will become more frequent, severe, and widespread under climate change.
The research team used climate models to project compound climate extremes if carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise.
Some areas, such as South Africa, the Amazon, and parts of Europe, will become drier as temperatures rise. Wet-hot extremes will be more severe than dry-hot extremes and cover a larger area of the globe, including the eastern United States, eastern and southern Asia, Australia, and central Africa.
“Given the fact that the risk of compound wet-hot extremes in a warming climate is larger than compound dry-hot extremes, these wet-hot extremes should be included in risk management strategies,” said lead author Haijiang Wu of China’s Northwest A&F University.
Wet-hot extremes will be more likely as the atmosphere’s capacity to hold moisture increases by 6% to 7% for every 1-degree Celsius increase in temperature. The research team’s projections suggest that regions likely to be impacted by wet-extremes are already prone to geological hazards and produce many of the world’s crops. Thus, an increase in severe heat, rain, and floods has the potential to destroy crops.
Future policy and strategies should consider the study’s results concerning the impact of combined heat waves and heavy rainfall.
“If we overlook the risk of compound wet-hot extremes and fail to take sufficient early warning, the impacts on water-food-energy security would be unimaginable,” explained Wu.