Extreme high‐temperature events have large socioeconomic and human health impacts. East Asia (EA) is a populous region, and it is crucial to assess the changes in extreme high‐temperature events in this region under different climate change scenarios. The Community Earth System Model low‐warming experiment data were applied to investigate the changes in the mean and extreme high temperatures in EA under 1.5°C and 2°C warming conditions above preindustrial levels. The results show that the magnitude of warming in EA is approximately 0.2°C higher than the global mean. Most populous subregions, including eastern China, the Korean Peninsula, and Japan, will see more intense, more frequent, and longer‐lasting extreme temperature events under 1.5°C and 2°C warming. The 0.5°C lower warming will help avoid 35%–46% of the increases in extreme high‐temperature events in terms of intensity, frequency, and duration in EA with maximal avoidance values (37%–49%) occurring in Mongolia. Thus, it is beneficial for EA to limit the warming target to 1.5°C rather than 2°C.
With anthropogenic global warming, heat‐related extreme events are projected to increase in severity and frequency. Already vulnerable regions like Africa will be hard‐hit. Therefore, such regions could benefit from low global warming levels. Using the Community Earth System Model low warming simulations, we investigate changes in temperature extremes across Africa as a function of global mean temperature in the context of the implications of the Paris Agreement's targets. A significant warming across Africa is projected at the 1.5 °C warming world and is amplified at the 2 °C world, exceeding the mean global warming rate. Specifically, North Africa and East Africa regions are projected to have the highest and lowest temperature changes of 0.63 °C (0.60–0.67 °C) and 0.50 °C (0.47–0.54 °C), respectively, between the 1.5 and 2 °C warmer worlds. Consequently, hot events are also estimated to increase with global warming. We showed that limiting warming to 1.5 °C instead of 2 °C may lead to 29% (27–31%) to 35% (33–37%) reduction in severity of hot events and to 31% (30–33%) to 42% (39–48%) reduction in the frequency of the threshold‐based high‐temperature events across Africa. The highest reductions are projected over North Africa. Furthermore, restricting warming to 0.5 °C lower than 2 °C might also result in 28% (34–40%) to 37% (25–34%) reduction in severity of once‐in‐10/20‐year heat events across Africa with North Africa having the highest benefits than tropical regions. Thus, restricting warming to low levels may indeed translate to substantial benefits of reduced intensity and frequency of extreme heat events across Africa.
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