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The 2021 western North America heat wave among the most extreme events ever recorded globally
In June 2021, western North America experienced a record-breaking heat wave outside the distribution of previously observed temperatures. While it is clear that the event was extreme, it is not obvious whether other areas in the world have also experienced events so far outside their natural variabi...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
American Association for the Advancement of Science
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9067932/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35507648 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abm6860 |
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author | Thompson, Vikki Kennedy-Asser, Alan T. Vosper, Emily Lo, Y. T. Eunice Huntingford, Chris Andrews, Oliver Collins, Matthew Hegerl, Gabrielle C. Mitchell, Dann |
author_facet | Thompson, Vikki Kennedy-Asser, Alan T. Vosper, Emily Lo, Y. T. Eunice Huntingford, Chris Andrews, Oliver Collins, Matthew Hegerl, Gabrielle C. Mitchell, Dann |
author_sort | Thompson, Vikki |
collection | PubMed |
description | In June 2021, western North America experienced a record-breaking heat wave outside the distribution of previously observed temperatures. While it is clear that the event was extreme, it is not obvious whether other areas in the world have also experienced events so far outside their natural variability. Using a novel assessment of heat extremes, we investigate how extreme this event was in the global context. Characterizing the relative intensity of an event as the number of standard deviations from the mean, the western North America heat wave is remarkable, coming in at over four standard deviations. Throughout the globe, where we have reliable data, only five other heat waves were found to be more extreme since 1960. We find that in both reanalyses and climate projections, the statistical distribution of extremes increases through time, in line with the distribution mean shift due to climate change. Regions that, by chance, have not had a recent extreme heat wave may be less prepared for potentially imminent events. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9067932 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | American Association for the Advancement of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-90679322022-05-13 The 2021 western North America heat wave among the most extreme events ever recorded globally Thompson, Vikki Kennedy-Asser, Alan T. Vosper, Emily Lo, Y. T. Eunice Huntingford, Chris Andrews, Oliver Collins, Matthew Hegerl, Gabrielle C. Mitchell, Dann Sci Adv Earth, Environmental, Ecological, and Space Sciences In June 2021, western North America experienced a record-breaking heat wave outside the distribution of previously observed temperatures. While it is clear that the event was extreme, it is not obvious whether other areas in the world have also experienced events so far outside their natural variability. Using a novel assessment of heat extremes, we investigate how extreme this event was in the global context. Characterizing the relative intensity of an event as the number of standard deviations from the mean, the western North America heat wave is remarkable, coming in at over four standard deviations. Throughout the globe, where we have reliable data, only five other heat waves were found to be more extreme since 1960. We find that in both reanalyses and climate projections, the statistical distribution of extremes increases through time, in line with the distribution mean shift due to climate change. Regions that, by chance, have not had a recent extreme heat wave may be less prepared for potentially imminent events. American Association for the Advancement of Science 2022-05-04 /pmc/articles/PMC9067932/ /pubmed/35507648 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abm6860 Text en Copyright © 2022 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Earth, Environmental, Ecological, and Space Sciences Thompson, Vikki Kennedy-Asser, Alan T. Vosper, Emily Lo, Y. T. Eunice Huntingford, Chris Andrews, Oliver Collins, Matthew Hegerl, Gabrielle C. Mitchell, Dann The 2021 western North America heat wave among the most extreme events ever recorded globally |
title | The 2021 western North America heat wave among the most extreme events ever recorded globally |
title_full | The 2021 western North America heat wave among the most extreme events ever recorded globally |
title_fullStr | The 2021 western North America heat wave among the most extreme events ever recorded globally |
title_full_unstemmed | The 2021 western North America heat wave among the most extreme events ever recorded globally |
title_short | The 2021 western North America heat wave among the most extreme events ever recorded globally |
title_sort | 2021 western north america heat wave among the most extreme events ever recorded globally |
topic | Earth, Environmental, Ecological, and Space Sciences |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9067932/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35507648 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abm6860 |
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