Global warming level indicators of climate change and hotspots of exposure

Abstract

Abstract In the 21st century, a growing population will be exposed to various hazards caused by a warming climate. Here we present a new database of 12 climate change indicators with a total of 42 variants at different global warming levels (GWLs) (1.2 °C–3.5 °C), which is based on global climate and hydrological model data from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project round 6 and the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project round 3b at 0.5° spatial resolution. It comprises of indicators relating to temperature and precipitation extremes, heatwave events, and hydrological variability. To facilitate the comparison of hazards from different indicators, including for an audience without a scientific background, we have developed a bivariate hazard score which is applied on the grid cell level and incorporates statistics on both the absolute hazard (e.g. low or high precipitation) and the relative change under global warming compared to the reference period (e.g. a large change from low to high precipitation). Additionally, we calculate exposed land area and population through the 21st century for a large set of countries and regions by combining this score with gridded projections of population from the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). The datasets are intended for use by the wider research community and analysts seeking digestible climate hazard and exposure data summarized by GWLs. To illustrate potential uses of the data, in a preliminary analysis we find that even at 1.5 °C large parts of the land area and population face substantial unavoidable risks from multiple indicators, with 86% of the world’s population exposed to at least three indicators with at least medium hazard using the population projections for SSP2 in the year 2050. This picture only worsens with increasing warming, as the land areas facing the highest number of impacts coincide with some of the most densely populated parts of the world.