Seasonal temperature and precipitation record breakings in Hungary in a warming world

Abstract

Climate change is leading to new daily record-breaking values globally. Since there is a clear shift towards the higher temperature values, the ratio of the numbers of new record high temperatures to record lows indicates the acceleration of global warming differently at regional levels—but is there an amplification for precipitation records as well? The main purpose of this regional analysis is to determine how many record highs/lows are broken on a seasonal level, and how large the area affected is, which enables us to assess the potentially large impacts at a local scale. The analysis is based on the statistical characteristics that the number of record breakings decreases exponentially with time for a stationary climate (when natural variability prevails). The assessment focuses on Hungary and considers the past from 1971 and the future from 2021. Results suggest that (1) currently the ratio of the numbers of new record high to record low temperatures is higher in Hungary than globally, particularly for summer and autumn (around 3.5); (2) substantially more new warm records and almost no cold records are expected by the late century (with a ratio of 140–160) following a high emission scenario, particularly in summer, when the impacts of these record breakings are the largest; (3) new precipitation records in the region are much less affected by the anthropogenic activity.