Increased impact of heat domes on 2021-like heat extremes in North America under global warming.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 36973258.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-37309-y and PMC identifier 10042826.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
During summer 2021, Western North America (WNA) experienced an unprecedented heatwave with record-breaking high temperatures associated with a strong anomalous high-pressure system, i.e., a heat dome. Here, we use a flow analog method and find that the heat dome over the WNA can explain half of the magnitude of the anomalous temperature. The intensities of hot extremes associated with similar heat dome-like atmospheric circulations increase faster than background global warming in both historical change and future projection. Such relationship between hot extremes and mean temperature can be partly explained by soil moisture-atmosphere feedback. The probability of 2021-like heat extremes is projected to increase due to the background warming, the enhanced soil moisture-atmosphere feedback and the weak but still significantly increased probability of the heat dome-like circulation. The population exposure to such heat extremes will also increase. Limiting global warming to 1.5 °C instead of 2 °C (3 °C) would lead to an avoided impact of 53% (89%) of the increase in population exposure to 2021-like heat extremes under the RCP8.5-SSP5 scenario.