A global attribution analysis of increasing risk of successive runoff-heat extreme events driven by anthropogenic forcing

Abstract

The successive runoff-heat extreme (SRHE) events, defined as the occurrence of an extreme runoff event followed by a heatwave event, have become more frequent under recent global warming. However, the impact of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) on global changes in SRHE characteristics during the past decades remains unclear. Here, we evaluate the impact of ACC on SRHE frequency and characteristics during 1950–2014, based on the daily maximum and minimum temperature and total runoff data simulated by five global climate models (GCMs) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) under the “anthropogenic and natural both (ALL)” and “natural only (NAT)” experiments. Attribution of SRHE changes with different durations and intervals between extreme runoff and heatwave (IRHs) is achieved by using the fraction attributable risk (FAR) method. Results indicate that ACC exacerbates SRHE occurrence for most global regions, especially in the Southern Hemisphere (> 60 % increase in probability), but the spatial variability of this impact decreases over time. The globally-average probability of SRHE occurrence due to ACC has increased significantly by 40 % during 1971–2014 (∼10 %/decade), and the probability of SRHE with the short IRHs and long duration tends to be larger than other types of SRHE. ACC also prolongs the duration of SRHE in most global regions, with an increase of 1–4.5 folds in northern South America, central Africa, and southeastern Asia during 1950–2014. Partial correlation analysis indicates that the intensification of heatwave due to ACC contributes more than that of extreme runoff to SRHE occurrence in nearly all global regions, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere.