Two consecutive failed rainy seasons in the southern part of Madagascar in 2019–21 had devastating impacts on the population, including an amplification of the ongoing food insecurity in the area. The drought events were second in severity only to the 1990–92 drought and were estimated in a previous study to have a return period of 135 years. In this study, the physical mechanisms that led to these

Marine heatwaves (MHWs) have recently been recognized as extreme climate events considering their devastating impacts on marine ecosystems. Our study explored the spatial and temporal variability of short (duration <10 days) and long MHWs in nine sub-regions around the Australian coastal region using the original (5-day) and an updated longer duration (10-day) criteria for MHW identification based

Severe compound drought-heatwave events were observed over three regions of the Contiguous United States (CONUS), Northwest (NW), Great Plains (GP), and Northeast (NE) regions, during July and August 2022. In this study, we have found that the developments of these drought-heatwave events were shaped by different land-atmosphere coupling behaviors which are associated with water and energy limitation

Compound flash drought and heatwave (FDHW) events have garnered increasing amounts of attention due to their substantial impacts on agriculture, water resources, and public health. However, studies on their intensity and classification in China are limited. In this study, we classified FDHW events in China from 1980 to 2022 using a classification framework designed to address regional patterns and

Hailstorms are severe weather events with the potential for devastating impacts. The consequences can be significantly worsened when hail events are accompanied by strong winds, intensifying both hail momentum and damage to property sidings and windows. Additionally, rainfall extremes during hailstorms can disrupt the drainage systems, potentially leading to flash flooding. Therefore, understanding

In July 2022, regions with elevations exceeding 5 000 m on the inner Tibetan Plateau (TP) witnessed a record-breaking heatwave. But how the atmospheric circulation and soil moisture play roles in the occurrence and maintenance of the heatwave in such high elevation climate sensitive region remains unknown. Here, by using the flow analogue method, we find that negative soil moisture anomalies explain

Rapid urbanisation along the coasts of the world in recent decades has increased their vulnerability to storm surges, especially in response to mean sea level rise. The unique geographical and social conditions of Copenhagen, a major European coastal city, have prompted urban expansion along Køge Bay to the south of the city. However, this new urbanisation area is confronted with the common obstacle

Unprecedentedly large areas were burned during the 2016/17 and 2022/23 fire seasons in south-central Chile (34-39°S). These seasonal-aggregated values were mostly accounted for human-caused wildfires within a limited period in late January 2017 and early February 2023. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the meteorological conditions during these events, from local to hemispheric

Terrestrial vegetation plays a vital role in global carbon recycling, but it is also affected by compound events (CEs); however, little is known about the impacts of these CEs on vegetation in terms of their occurrence and magnitude. Using meteorological observations and vegetation indices (leaf area index (LAI), gross primary productivity (GPP), and net primary productivity (NPP)) from 1981 to 2020

Over the past two decades, there has been a significant shift in tropical cyclone (TC) activity in the western North Pacific (WNP) basin during the boreal summer. Our analysis of data spanning from 1979 to 2021 reveals significant shifts in the WNP TC characteristics and rainfall pattern variation. To deepen our understanding of TC-related precipitation dynamics, we expressly address the difference

In this work, we compare the rate of warming of summertime extreme temperatures (summer maximum value of daily maximum temperature; TXx) relative to the local mean (summer mean daily maximum temperature; TXm) over the Northern Hemisphere in observations and one set of large ensemble (LE) simulations. During the 1979–2021 historical period, observations and simulations show robust warming trends in

The frequency of heatwaves in the Arctic is on the rise under global warming. These occurrences not only profoundly impact the local ecological environment but also exert remote effects on East Asia and even the global climate. Yet, there exists a noticeable dearth of research focus on Arctic compound daytime-nighttime heatwaves, limiting our comprehension of Arctic climate dynamics. We investigated

In the present study two extreme events that occurred in the East Coast of Northeast Brazil (ENEB) during 2022 and 2023 were evaluated. These events are becoming increasingly frequent in all regions of Brazil, associated with significant material and human losses, emphasizing the significance of a deeper comprehension of these events. ERA5 global reanalysis data, GOES-16 satellite imagery and pluviometric

The 2022-23 hydrological year in the Lake Titicaca, Desaguadero River, and Lake Poopó hydrological system (TDPS) over the South American Altiplano constituted a historically dry period. This drought was particularly severe during the pre-wet season (October–December), when the TDPS and the adjacent Andean-Amazon region experienced as much as 60% reductions in rainfall. Consequently, Titicaca Lake water

Drought is projected to intensify under warming climate and will continuously threaten global food security. Assessing the risk of yield loss due to drought is key to developing effective agronomic options for farmers and policymakers. However, little has been known about determining the likelihood of reduced crop yield under different drought conditions and defining thresholds that trigger yield loss

The Yangtze River basin experienced record-breaking high temperatures in July–August 2022, leading the China Meteorological Administration to issue its first ever “red heat warning”. We use simulations from the Detection and Attribution Model Intercomparison Project (DAMIP) of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6 (CMIP6) to investigate the role of anthropogenic drivers in this extreme event

During summer 2020, Southern China experienced an extremely dry and hot summer, which was identified as one of the top ten domestic weather and climate extreme events in 2020 by China Meteorological Administration. Summer mean precipitation, surface air temperature (TAS), and number of hot days (NHD) were about 25% dryer, 1.5 °C warmer, and 11 days larger than the 1981–2010 climatologies. These are

Nigeria's growing population faces an increasing heat burden with potential health risks. The Universal Thermal Comfort Index (UTCI) links outdoor conditions and human well-being but lacks comprehensive data in developing regions like Nigeria. ERA5-HEAT reanalysis offers a solution with gridded UTCI and MRT data, but validation is crucial. Thus, this study evaluates the ERA5-HEAT UTCI against data

The Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) is subjected to large-scale, destructive floods. The most dramatic was a mid-November 2021 event when atmospheric rivers (ARs) linked to high-intensity storms caused heavy rainfall in southwestern BC, triggering catastrophic flooding. This study examines 37 floods from 2000 to 2021 using information from over 250 climatological stations and compares events

The Tinderbox Drought (2017–2019) was one of the most severe droughts recorded in Australia. The extreme summer air temperatures (>40 °C) combined with drought, contributed to the unprecedented Black Summer bushfires in 2019–20 over southeast Australia. Whilst the temperature extremes were largely driven by synoptic processes, it is important to understand to what extent interactions between land and

The occurrence of extreme storm surges and precipitation simultaneously or successively can lead to compound flooding. The interaction between extreme storm surges and precipitation holds significant implications for understanding the potential contributing to compound flood risk in coastal areas. This study examines the likelihood of joint occurrence for compound extreme storm surges and precipitation

The motivation of our study is to provide forecasters and users complementary guidance and tools to identify and predict atmospheric conditions that could lead to life-threatening flash floods. Using hourly and sub-hourly rainfall datasets, proximity radiosondes, ERA5 reanalysis of extreme rainfall events in the UK during 2000–2020, and case studies in 2021, we observe a three-layered atmospheric structure

Dry and humid-heat extremes are two types of heat extremes, each exhibiting unique climatological characteristics and impacts on different sectors of society. Using historical simulations and projections produced under two Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5) by models from the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), we show a comparative assessment of the

The extraction of individual events from continuous time series is a common challenge in many extreme value studies. In the field of environmental science, various methods and algorithms for event identification (de-clustering) have been applied in the past. The distinctive features of extreme events, such as their temporal evolutions, durations, and inter-arrival times, vary significantly from one

Northeast China, recognized as a global flash drought hotspot and a region of nationally important commercial grains and ecological fragility, is highly susceptible to the profound impacts of droughts on both food security and ecological safety. However, the regional-scale characteristics, possible causes and impacts of flash droughts across Northeast China are rarely investigated. Soil moisture data

Severe floods and landslides in Eastern Northeast Brazil in May 2022 led to severe impacts with human losses and material damage. These disasters were a direct consequence of extremely heavy rainfall days. A rapid attribution study was performed to assess the role of anthropogenic climate change in 7 and 15-day mean rainfall over this region. A dense network of 389 weather stations was analysed resulting

Drought is one of the key drivers of food insecurity in Afghanistan, which is among the most food insecure countries in the world. In this study, we build on previous research and seek to answer the central question: ?” We do so by utilizing multiple indicators of droughts and available wheat yield reports. We find a clear distinction in the probability of drought (defined as being in the lower tercile)

Climate strongly influences fire activity, and the alignment of multiple weather and climate extremes, such as co-occurrence of hot and dry, leads to more severe fires. Recognizing the knowledge gap on the combination of compound drought–heatwave events and fire activities, we applied an event coincidence analysis to investigate their spatiotemporal dependence in China during 2003–2020 based on remote

This study suggests a methodology for probabilistic forecasts of the extreme heat events in East Asia based on an operational global ensemble prediction used by the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA). It focuses on the medium range of up to 11 days, providing probabilities of heatwave and tropical night occurrence each day. Forecast validation in the summer from 2016 to 2021 shows that the deterministic

Angola is exceptionally vulnerable to climate change, and sectors such as health, agricultural, water resources and ecosystems may endure severe impacts. Here, an extensive analysis of the signal of climate change on temperature, precipitation, extremes and compound events, for the end of the 21st century, is presented. The analysis is based on a CORDEX-Africa multi-model ensemble at 0.44° resolution

Dryland ecosystems are highly vulnerable to extreme droughts under climate change. Yet, response of vegetation productivity across global drylands to changes in drought stress in a warming climate remains obscure. Here, we investigated future changes in drought stress, characterized by low soil moisture (SM) and high vapor pressure deficit (VPD), under severe drought conditions and its impact on gross

We document 1394 extreme precipitation events (EPEs) over Aotearoa New Zealand’s (ANZ) Regional Councils between March 1996 and December 2021. The characteristics of EPEs are documented using a novel spatio-temporal framework that diagnoses the peak intensity, duration, and accumulation of the EPE using the ERA-5 and MERRA-2 reanalysis products. Properties of EPEs were evaluated according to region

Coastal flood damage is primarily the result of extreme sea levels. Climate change is expected to drive an increase in these extremes. While proper estimation of changes in storm surges is essential to estimate changes in extreme sea levels, there remains low confidence in future trends of surge contribution to extreme sea levels. Alerting local populations of imminent extreme sea levels is also critical

Freezing rain is one of the most damaging weather phenomena in winter or early spring in many parts of the world, affecting traffic, power lines and agriculture. Thus, reliable and computationally efficient prediction of its occurrence is urgently needed in weather forecast operations. However, there are different thermodynamic processes that can lead to freezing rain, resulting in unsatisfactory forecasting

This study developed a novel approach that integrated climate model selection and multi-model ensemble (MME) construction to effectively represent model uncertainties and, consequently, improve consistency in the evaluation of changes to extreme rainfall in different scenarios. Our focus was to combine 10 regional climate model (RCM) simulations, forced by two global climate models (GCM), especially

Wave setup is a physical process that induces a temporal increase of the mean water level due to wave dissipation by bottom friction and breaking in the surf zone, extending over tens to hundreds of meters in the cross-shore direction. Wave setup contribution to coastal sea level solely induced by wind and atmospheric effects can increase by more than 100% under extreme events and conditions favoring

The Simplified Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (sWBGT) is widely used in heat stress assessments for climate-change studies, but its limitations have not been thoroughly explored. Building on recent critiques of sWBGT's use for current climate on global scale, this study examines sWBGT's biases using dynamically-downscaled sub-daily climate projections under multiple future emission scenarios. The analysis

Extreme rainfall events (ERE) during the summer monsoon season have been occurring over most parts of India resulting in flooding and immense socio-economic loss. These extremes are becoming a frequent norm in the hilly and mountainous regions of the country such as Assam. Assam received one of the most historical EREs from 14–June 17, 2022. The present study analyses the performance of a suite of

We analyzed the possible effects of recent sea surface temperature (SST) warming on the extraordinary East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) precipitation in 2020 summer. The dynamic and thermodynamic impacts of SST are examined by conducting regional climate model experiments with observed SST and cold SST where the 22-year SST trend is removed. In the presence of warm SST, precipitation increases in low

Tornadoes are a co-occurring extreme that can be produced by landfalling tropical cyclones (TCs). These tornadoes can exacerbate the loss of life and property damage caused by the TC from which they were spawned. It is uncertain how the severe weather environments of landfalling TCs may change in a future climate and how this could impact tornado activity from TCs. In this study, we investigated four

The study employed high-resolution atmospheric general circulation models (AGCM) to simulate tropical cyclones (TCs) and evaluated two TC genesis potential indices in reflecting projected TC changes in the western North Pacific (WNP) under a warming scenario. Both indices accurately represented the seasonal variation of TC genesis frequency (TCGF) and its spatial distribution in historical simulations

On 8–11 August 2022, South Korea experienced a catastrophic heavy rainfall event (HRE) with 14 fatalities. To elucidate its driving mechanisms, the present study performs a multiscale analysis by hierarchically delineating the synoptic and large-scale characteristics of the HRE. Its synoptic condition was featured by the confrontation of the western North Pacific subtropical high and the continental

Marine heatwaves (MHWs) are extreme sea surface temperature (SST) events in all ocean basins, with far-reaching impacts on marine ecosystems and socio-economy. The leading patterns, trend, and interannual variability of summer MHWs in the tropical Indian Ocean (TIO) are investigated in this study. The first empirical orthogonal function (EOF) mode of frequency of MHWs exhibits a monopole pattern over

Reanalysis-driven regional climate simulations using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model in New South Wales (NSW) and Australian Regional Climate Modelling (NARCliM) Version 2.0 are assessed for capturing precipitation extreme indices. Seven configurations of the WRF model driven by ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) Reanalysis v5 (ERA5) for Australia from 1979

During 2020, the Arctic is marked by extremely low sea ice coverage and hot climate. September Sea Ice Extent (SIE) was about 2.3 million km below the 1979–2014 mean and the 2nd lowest on the 1979–2020 record, while regional summer (June–August, JJA) mean 2 m air temperature (TAS) was about 1.3 °C above the 1979–2014 mean and was the hottest on record at the time. Locally, September Sea Ice Concentration

Due to the scarcity of observational data in the early 20th century, very limited research has explored the impact of human activities on temperature extremes at the regional scale. Here we used a newly developed homogenized near-surface air temperature dataset from the beginning of the 20th century to estimate the frequency and intensity of extreme temperatures in eastern China and evaluate their

The co-occurrence of wind and rainfall extremes can yield larger impacts than when either hazard occurs in isolation. This study assesses compound extremes produced by Extra-tropical cyclones (ETCs) during winter from two perspectives. Firstly, we assess ETCs with extreme footprints of wind and rainfall; footprint severity is measured using the wind severity index (WSI) and rain severity index (RSI)

In 2017-2019 southeast Australia experienced one of its most severe droughts since 1900. Rainfall over the region encompassing the Murray-Darling Basin was consistently below average for three consecutive cool seasons, an unprecedented event on record. A strong positive Indian Ocean Dipole event has been previously suggested to have intensified the conditions of the drought in 2019, however the state

Despite robust warming trends in surface air temperatures over southern Africa, extreme low temperature (ELT) events still occur from time to time. A recent ELT event affected South Africa resulting in disruptions in socio-economic activities amid a coronavirus pandemic. At least 27 long-term low temperature records were broken during 22–24 July 2021, with snow falls observed mostly over high ground

Attribution of extreme climate events to global climate change as a result of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions has become increasingly important. Extreme climate events arise at the intersection of natural climate variability and a forced response of the Earth system to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, which may alter the frequency and severity of such events. Accounting for the effects

This study investigates the predictability of the 2018 Northern Europe heatwave using the GloSea5 forecast model from the perspective of land-atmosphere interactions. We focus on an inverse relationship wherein soil drying leads to increased temperatures and the model's ability to simulate this hypersensitivity in the soil moisture-temperature coupling on the dry side of a breakpoint defined as the

Storm surges are the most important driver of flooding in many coastal areas. Understanding the spatial extent of storm surge events has important financial and practical implications for flood risk management, reinsurance, infrastructure reliability and emergency response. In this paper, we apply a new tracking algorithm to a high-resolution surge hindcast (CODEC, 1980–2017) to characterize the spatial

Daily precipitation of different intensities is expected to change differently in response to global warming. Based on station observations and simulations from the latest climate models, we investigated the non-uniform features of changes in daily precipitation frequency, intensity and amount over China. Results show that western China experiences an overall wetting trend across the spectrum of precipitation

Flash droughts threaten ecosystems substantially because of the fast onset and low predictability. Soil and atmospheric water stress are two main factors reducing ecosystem productivity during flash droughts. However, the long-term trends in the soil and atmospheric water stress on vegetation during flash droughts are unclear. By conducting long-term land surface model simulations, this study investigated

Increases in air temperature lead to increased dryness of the air and potentially develops increased dryness in the soil. Extreme dryness (in the soil and/or in the atmosphere) affects the capacity of ecosystems for functioning and for modulating the climate. Here, we used long-term high temporal resolution (daily) soil moisture (SM) and vapor pressure deficit (VPD) data of high spatial resolution