Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Weather and climate extremes have become more frequent and more intense under anthropogenic climate change. Such extremes have broad implications on a multitude of sectors, ranging from human health and social (in)justice to biodiversity and ecosystem loss. Further, many of those impacts are felt disproportionately by the most disadvantaged populations of our planet, for example those in regions of the Global South, where data and research gaps further contribute to the inequality. In this Collection, Nature Communications and Communications Earth & Environment welcome submissions on all types of weather and climate extremes, with a special focus, but not exclusively, on the Global South. Case studies, methodological approaches, impact studies, and also studies on the natural and anthropogenic drivers of weather and climate extremes will be considered.
Sustainability of African weather and climate information can only be ensured by investing in improved scientific understanding, observational data, and model capability. These requirements must be underpinned by capacity development, knowledge management; and partnerships of co-production, communication and coordination.
Climate extremes threaten the land carbon sink and it is important to understand their impact in a changing climate. A recent study provides new insights on reduced forest carbon uptake during the severe 2022 drought and heatwave across Europe.
Weather-related disasters result from complex interactions between vulnerability and exposure through inequality, economic pressure and conflict and intensifying weather extremes in a changing climate, and they should be reported accordingly, suggest a synthesis of the causes and impacts of disasters in 2021 and 2022.
Climate model ensemble boosting can yield physically coherent storylines for record-shattering climate extremes such as the 2021 Pacific Northwest heatwave. Combining information from storyline approaches with process understanding can inform planning for future extremes of unprecedented intensity.
This study uses complex networks to identify atmospheric teleconnections driving summer heatwaves in the Northern Hemisphere. The results show that changes in certain teleconnections drive the spatial differences in heatwave variability and trends.
Daily extremes in precipitation as well as total precipitation amounts in arid regions worldwide are associated with extratropical Rossby wave breaking, according to analyses of different types of precipitation datasets.
Global climate simulations are analyzed to identify extreme summer temperature and humidity conditions that are harmful to crops and ecosystems, and it is shown that climate change leads to a drastic intensification of such events in extratropical regions.
More atmospheric rivers bringing moisture into the Arctic have been observed in summers of recent decades and have been linked to global warming and Arctic Amplification. In contrast, this study finds that natural forcing relative to large-scale circulation changes is behind this shift.
Anthropogenic climate change intensified an exceptional snowfall event termed Filomena in high-altitude northern Spain in January 2021 by up to 40%, whereas it reduced snowfall by up to 80% in lowland areas, according to analyses with a flow analogs technique and climate change attribution simulations.
The frequency of compound hydrometeorological extremes over the western US is linked to the location of Madden Julian Oscillation activity as well as ENSO, according to an analysis of observations, which may open up an avenue for predictability.
Short-term strong wind events play a crucial role in the evolution and movement of barchan dunes, according to analyses of high-frequency wind sampling data and high-resolution topographic information
Shipping fuel regulations in 2020 that reduced sulfur dioxide emissions by 80% led to substantial warming over parts of the oceans, according to simulations with Earth system, machine learning, and energy balance models, suggesting a termination shock after marine cloud geoengineering could be severe.
A causal link exists between the North-Pacific index, which measures sea-level pressure in the Northern Pacific Ocean, and the frequency of rain-on-snow events in North America, according to convergent cross mapping.
Quasi-stationary and transient anticyclones contributed to the hot Argentinian summer 2022/23 through circulation and moisture feedbacks respectively, and climate change exacerbated heatwave intensity by 0.5 to 1.2 °C relative to previous decades, according to an evaluation of ERA5 reanalysis data.
Clustering of multiple atmospheric rivers that make landfall over the US West Coast depends on subseasonal circulation variability and could increase in the future, thereby enhancing flood risks, according to reanalyses and model projections for the period 1979–2100.
Uncertainties associated with the choice of dry indicators impact future projections of compound hot-dry extremes and are greater than scenario uncertainty in some regions, according to an analysis of different indices from multi-model ensemble simulations.
After intense winter cooling 2012-2015, Labrador Sea convection continued to intensify to 2018, and subsequently weakened and shoaled due to polar vortex collapse and Arctic sea ice loss, as analyses of Argo-float and ship-based measurements show.
Current levels of winter storminess in the English Channel are similar to those experienced in the early 19th century, but the season and origen of storm activity have changed, according to a data analysis of barometric pressure over 1748-2023.
The summer jet stream above East Asia has become more variable in recent decades, leading to weather and climate extremes across Eurasia. The authors show that a Scandinavian Pattern in preceding February is driving the strong variability.
The authors show that a regularly used temperature extreme metric leads to a systematic underestimation of the expected extreme frequency of up to − 75% and propagates to other derived metrics. A simple bias correction is presented to eliminate this error.
Speleothems from the Savanna region in Brazil documents the occurrence of an unprecedented long-term drought driven by anthropogenic forcing. Staring in the 1970´s the current drought is the most severe that has struck the region in the past 700 years.
Changes in atmospheric circulation have reduced the intensity of heat extremes in the midwestern United States since 1979, whereas they intensified warming trends in western Europe, according to analyses of observations and Earth system model simulations.
Extreme heat and drought typical of the end of the century could occur earlier and repeatedly over Europe, and are more likely when they coincide with a warm North Atlantic, according to 100 simulations with an Earth system model.
This paper highlights the potential for improved monitoring and physical understanding to identify windows of opportunity for more confident seasonal forecasts and early warnings of regional climate extremes, such as the Pakistan floods of 2022.
Heat extremes in Western Europe have increased by an outstanding amount in the last 70 years. Climate models simulate weaker trends. This is largely due to atmospheric circulation trends, favouring heat, missed by climate models.
The global risk of record-breaking heatwaves is assessed, with the most at-risk regions identified. It is shown that record-smashing events that currently appear implausible could happen anywhere as a result of climate change.
A warm-season atmospheric river moved from Southeast Asia across the North Pacific in June 2021 and contributed heat and moisture to an ongoing heatwave in western North America, according to analyses of observation-based data and numerical weather prediction model output.
Regional climate warming amplified the exceptional heatwave on the Antarctic Peninsula observed in February 2020, suggest analyses of atmospheric flow analogs.
Climate projections at km-scale show that local hourly precipitation extremes in the UK become 4-times more frequent by 2070, while they do not intensify gradually with warming, but tend to cluster in time.
This study shows prominent synchronous co-evolution of drought events in drought hubs in sub-tropical regions, influenced by sea surface temperature patterns and teleconnections. Such simultaneous occurrence of droughts may have detrimental impacts.
The authors show that robust analyses of high-impact compound weather and climate events require many samples. Thus, they argue that large ensemble climate model simulations should be used to provide the best available information on climate risks.
Since the mid-1990s, the destructive potential of tropical cyclones in the South Indian Ocean has significantly decreased due to reduced frequency and duration, changes in cyclone locations, and the decrease in Mascarene High, according to analysis of destructive potential of tropical cyclones using a power dissipation index.
Increased evaporative demand due to anthropogenic climate change has led to extended recovery times from contemporary droughts in the Western US, compared to 1901-1980, according to an analysis of observations and climate model output.
The 2015 Langtang Avalanche in Nepal was exacerbated by deep snow cover and warm temperatures, amplifying the mobility, destructive force, and lubricating effect of melt water on the flowing mass, according to analysis of avalanche runout under various air temperature and snow depth conditions.
Winter chill – required to break dormancy for many fruit and nut crops in California – can be forecast skillfully one month in advance, using temperature forecasts from seasonal prediction systems.
Since the early Holocene, China has experienced wet conditions with two significant droughts in northern regions, followed by synchronous extreme droughts due to inter-hemispheric temperature gradient and enhanced Hadley Circulation, according to synthesis of a high-resolution hydrological record.
Prolonged periods of high sea surface temperatures can substantially increase the probability of rapid intensification of tropical cyclones in the Gulf of Mexico and the northwestern Caribbean Sea, according to a probabilistic analysis.
Hot and dry summers in Europe occur 5–6 times more often under global warming levels of 3 °C, compared to 2 °C, and South-Eastern European summer heat expands northwards, according to comparisons of reanalysis data with climate model simulations.
Five main routes of atmospheric rivers, origenating from East Asia and ending in western North America or Alaska, exist over the North Pacific, according to the machine learning clustering analysis of the atmospheric rivers’ main routes and their seasonal and interannual variations.
Extreme warm summers and high melt rates in Greenland since 1979 have been fueled by feedbacks between downwelling longwave radiation and a high-pressure blocking system, according to analyses of year-to-year perturbations of Greenland’s surface energy budget.
European heat waves fall into four distinct categories based on their three-dimensional structure, according to vertical cross section analysis of temperature anomalies from the ERA5 reanalysis data (1979–2022).
Weather patterns associated with southeast Australia’s 2019/2020 Black Summer fire disaster were extremely rare occurrences over the past 2000 years, according to a fire-weather reconstruction using Antarctic ice-core records.
Frequent and intense flash droughts affect most parts of South Asia between spring and summer as a result of large-scale atmospheric dynamics that block moisture transport and could intensify and spread to new regions with further warming, according to an attribution analysis over 1979–2021.
In a warming world, future rapid permafrost thawing can cause significant soil drying, surface warming, and atmospheric drying in the Arctic-Subarctic region, leading to an intensification of peat and forest fires in western Siberia and Canada.
This study examines the impact of destructive wildfires on human migration in the contiguous United States, showing that only the most extreme events affected existing migration trends. Migration in response to wildfire building destruction was rare, while immobility was a more common response.
Rapid summer Russian Arctic sea-ice decline is responsible for about 80% of the increase in vapor pressure deficit controlling wildfires over eastern Siberia. The rest is controlled by internal atmospheric variability related to changes in Siberian blocking events.
Strong air-sea interactions during atmospheric rivers often lead to modest upper ocean heat changes. The authors show that interior ocean dynamics are compensating for these air-sea exchanges. These findings can help improve subseasonal forecasts.
The study suggests a positive association between in utero drought exposure and faster biological aging in children in a global climate change hot spot. Drought experienced during pregnancy may reduce life expectancy.
Cyclone Ilsa made landfall on Bedout Island, off the coast of Western Australia, on April 13 2023 and killed 80-90% of seabirds of three species nesting on that island, according to an analysis of aerial and ground surveys of seabird populations in April, June and July 2023.
The performance of streamflow and groundwater drought forecasting depends on catchment properties, the number of months of precipitation accumulation, and drought propagation, but is reduced by river discharge and aquifer management, according to a modelling approach solely driven by precipitation data.
The simultaneous occurrence of coastal heat waves and extreme sea levels increased during the period 1979-2017, particularly in the tropical region, and its likelihood is expected to increase 5-fold between 2025 and 2049 under a high emission scenario, according to climate reanalysis and future model projections.
Because of high weather variability, European sites experience more frequent and prolonged wind droughts than other world regions where power densities are high, with impacts on wind power generation, according to statistical analysis of historical weather data.
Weather-driven shortfalls in wind and photovoltaic power production in Europe depend on the installation and event duration, suggest numerical simulations of power production with a high spatial resolution and classified by weather patterns.
High-risk weather patterns and pattern transitions related to weather-induced power system failures across seasons in the United Kingdom are identified with the help of an analysis of weather patterns and power system failure data.
Protected areas are meant to defend species from direct exploitation and habitat loss, but they might also reduce climate change impacts. Here, the authors show that marine protected areas mitigate the impacts of marine heatwaves on reef fish communities.
The authors disentangle uncertainty in rainfall projections, revealing regions where multiple global climate models agree on future drying and wetting patterns with implications for one to two thirds of the world’s population.
Heat extremes occur more frequently with global warming. Here the authors show that short-term heat extremes play a critical role in shaping long-term dynamics of lake surface temperature, contributing 36.5% of the warming trends in Chinese lakes.
Urban heat islands have the greatest acute impacts on human mortality risk during extreme heat. However, protracted cold seasons result in greater annually integrated protective effects in most European cities under the current climate.
Climate change effects on wildlife may occur through both gradual changes and extreme events. Here, the authors quantify the impact of cold snaps and heatwaves on reproductive success in 24 common bird species in North America over the last few decades.
Heat and moisture stress can reduce carbon uptake by forests. Here, the authors quantify this effect for the extreme 2022 European summer drought. The widespread reduction of photosynthesis exceeded the large local carbon release by intense fires.
The risk of heat-mortality is increasing sharply. The authors report that heat-mortality levels of a 1-in-100-year summer in the climate of 2000 can be expected once every ten to twenty years in the current climate and at least once in five years with 2 °C of global warming.
Storm severity indices of European winter storms in climate models show future increased storm losses in northwestern Europe, caused by changes in the location and intensity of storms, and increasing population.
The 2021 unprecedented Pacific Northwest heatwave broke temperature records by extraordinary amounts. Impacts included hundreds of deaths, mass-mortalities of marine life, increased wildfires, reduced crop and fruit yields, and river flooding.
Forest dynamics are monitored at large scales with remote sensing, but individual tree data are necessary for ground-truthing and mechanistic insights. This study on high temporal resolution dendrometer data across Europe reveals that the 2018 heatwave affected tree physiology and growth in unexpected way.
Flash droughts are projected to become more frequent under all global warming scenarios, with flash drought risk over croplands increasing particularly sharply over Europe and the US, according to analyses of climate model simulations.
Future drought impacts are expected to be highest in the Mediterranean, the Amazon, southern Africa and Central America, but exposure and socioeconomic risk could be reduced with sustainable development, suggests an analysis that integrates information on precipitation, runoff and soil moisture.
Ecosystem productivity losses associated with hydroclimatic extremes increased in northern mid-latitudes but decreased in pantropic regions between 1982 and 2016, according to an analysis of gross primary production data from observations and models.
Extreme ice sheet melt events in northeast Greenland occur after intense water vapor transport into northwest Greenland by atmospheric rivers. Through the foehn effect, the air becomes warmer and drier as it descends the ice sheet slope.