Filters

2013 - 20182

More filters

2019 - 201912020 - 20231
Reset filters

Settings

Author: Coumou, Dim × Subject: extreme event ×

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Historic and future increase in the global land area affected by monthly heat extremes
    (Bristol : IOP Publishing, 2013) Coumou, Dim; Robinson, Alexander
    Climatic warming of about 0.5 ° C in the global mean since the 1970s has strongly increased the occurrence-probability of heat extremes on monthly to seasonal time scales. For the 21st century, climate models predict more substantial warming. Here we show that the multi-model mean of the CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project) climate models accurately reproduces the evolution over time and spatial patterns of the historically observed increase in monthly heat extremes. For the near-term (i.e., by 2040), the models predict a robust, several-fold increase in the frequency of such heat extremes, irrespective of the emission scenario. However, mitigation can strongly reduce the number of heat extremes by the second half of the 21st century. Unmitigated climate change causes most (>50%) continental regions to move to a new climatic regime with the coldest summer months by the end of the century substantially hotter than the hottest experienced today. We show that the land fraction experiencing extreme heat as a function of global mean temperature follows a simple cumulative distribution function, which depends only on natural variability and the level of spatial heterogeneity in the warming.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The different stratospheric influence on cold-extremes in Eurasia and North America
    (London : Springer Nature, 2018) Kretschmer, Marlene; Cohen, Judah; Matthias, Vivien; Runge, Jakob; Coumou, Dim
    The stratospheric polar vortex can influence the tropospheric circulation and thereby winter weather in the mid-latitudes. Weak vortex states, often associated with sudden stratospheric warmings (SSW), have been shown to increase the risk of cold-spells especially over Eurasia, but its role for North American winters is less clear. Using cluster analysis, we show that there are two dominant patterns of increased polar cap heights in the lower stratosphere. Both patterns represent a weak polar vortex but they are associated with different wave mechanisms and different regional tropospheric impacts. The first pattern is zonally symmetric and associated with absorbed upward-propagating wave activity, leading to a negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and cold-air outbreaks over northern Eurasia. This coupling mechanism is well-documented in the literature and is consistent with the downward migration of the northern annular mode (NAM). The second pattern is zonally asymmetric and linked to downward reflected planetary waves over Canada followed by a negative phase of the Western Pacific Oscillation (WPO) and cold-spells in Central Canada and the Great Lakes region. Causal effect network (CEN) analyses confirm the atmospheric pathways associated with this asymmetric pattern. Moreover, our findings suggest the reflective mechanism to be sensitive to the exact region of upward wave-activity fluxes and to be state-dependent on the strength of the vortex. Identifying the causal pathways that operate on weekly to monthly timescales can pave the way for improved sub-seasonal to seasonal forecasting of cold spells in the mid-latitudes.