Heat wave time of emergence patterns: a matter of definition

Abstract

Hot extremes, such as heatwaves, have been associated with health, economic, and ecosystem-wide impacts. The timing of emergence of changes in extremes due to anthropogenic climate change is a topic of broad scientific and societal importance. While various studies have estimated the timing and impacts of heatwaves, the definitional aspect of a heatwave in determining the relative time of emergence has not been addressed. We adopt two commonly used definitions of heatwave employed in different reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to evaluate the time at which the frequency of heatwaves becomes detectably different from the historical baseline using an ensemble of 10 GCMS from the CMIP6 archives forced by the SSP2–4.5 concentration pathway. For a heatwave definition of sustained temperatures exceeding 5 °C warmer above the historical climatology, time of emergence is earliest in high latitudes over land and displays correlation with the signal (amount of warming) and noise (variability). In contrast, for a heatwave definition of sustained temperatures exceeding the 90th percentile of historical climatology, time of emergence is earliest in low latitude regions and is correlated with the signal to noise ratio. This work underscores the importance of metric choice in estimating the timing of new climate regimes and that metric selection for informing adaptation timing should thus be tailored to the regional context.