Extreme climate change and contemporary analogs for cities in mainland China in a 2.0 °C warmer climate

Abstract

Climate change is bringing more extreme weather events, which disrupt the normal functioning of cities and threaten people’s lives. The public and city managers need to know the potential change that their cities would experience to better adapt it for sustainable development, which requires better communication of climate information to non-professionals. This study quantified the changes in extreme heat and extreme precipitation in 369 cities in mainland China under 2.0 °C global warming, and a climate-analog mapping was used to visualize the expected climate state in the future of a specific city would be similar to which city’s contemporary state. Our results show that 17 % of cities would reach new extreme heat states, and 65 % of cities are becoming hotter. For extreme precipitation, 64 % of northern cities would move southward by an average of 530 km, and 21 % of southern cities would join the contemporary extreme precipitation zones. Specifically, super-large cities with populations larger than 5 million would experience more intense changes, with an average 10 %-40 % greater increases in extreme heat and extreme precipitation than that of all cities. Under significant challenges, identifying similar contemporary cities and learning from their experiences can help managers and public make better preparations to better adapt to changes in extreme weather states.