Analyses of the Northern European Summer Heatwave of 2018

Yiou, Pascal; Cattiaux, Julien; Faranda, Davide; Kadygrov, Nikolay; Jézéquel, Aglaé; Naveau, Philippe; Ribes, Aurélien; Robin, Yoann; Thao, Soulivanh; Oldenborgh, Geert Jan van; Vrac, Mathieu

doi:10.1175/bams-d-19-0170.1

Cited by 57 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…The maximum value ranges from 12 to 20 d for all ensembles and both periods. These results are very similar to Zschenderlein et al (2019), who found a maximum heatwave duration of 12 d. We find this close similarity despite differences in the data set, the periods, the exact definition of the index, and the regions not being identical.…”

Section: How Extreme Was the Warm Summer Of 2018 Insupporting

confidence: 90%

“…As a consequence, Sweden experienced a very long warm period with an unusually high number of warm days. Similar pressure patterns to those observed in summer 2018 have previously been shown to be associated with warm temperature anomalies over different parts of Europe (Sousa et al, 2018;Zschenderlein et al, 2019); for example, Pfahl and Wernli (2012) found that most summer heatwaves (80 %) in northern Europe and Russia can be associated with atmospheric blocking situations. Sinclair et al (2019) concluded that the 2018 heatwave was not intensified by surface feed-R. A. I.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 78%

“…However, heatwaves do occur in this region and are part of the climatological conditions. Zschenderlein et al (2019) reported that the maximum number of heatwave days for their Scandinavian study area was 25 for the 1979-2016 period, with an annual maximum duration of 12 d for the heatwave in July-August 1982. Furthermore, they noted that the two most intense heatwaves in this area were observed in 1991 and in 2014.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The extremely warm summer of 2018 in Sweden – set in a historical context

et al. 2020

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Abstract. Two long-lasting high-pressure systems in summer 2018 led to persisting heatwaves over Scandinavia and other parts of Europe and an extended summer period with devastating impacts on agriculture, infrastructure, and human life. We use five climate model ensembles and the unique 263-year-long Stockholm temperature time series along with a composite 150-year-long time series for the whole of Sweden to set the latest heatwave in the summer of 2018 into historical perspective. With 263 years of data, we are able to grasp the pre-industrial period well and see a clear upward trend in temperature as well as upward trends in five heatwave indicators. With five climate model ensembles providing 20 580 simulated summers representing the latest 70 years, we analyse the likelihood of such a heat event and how unusual the 2018 Swedish summer actually was. We find that conditions such as those observed in summer 2018 are present in all climate model ensembles. An exception is the monthly mean temperature for May for which 2018 was warmer than any member in one of the five climate model ensembles. However, even if the ensembles generally contain individual years like 2018, the comparison shows that such conditions are rare. For the indices assessed here, anomalies such as those observed in 2018 occur in a maximum of 5 % of the ensemble members, sometimes even in less than 1 %. For all of the indices evaluated, we find that the probability of a summer such as that in 2018 has increased from relatively low values in the pre-industrial era (1861–1890, one ensemble) and the recent past (1951–1980, all five ensembles) to higher values in the most recent decades (1989–2018). An implication of this is that anthropogenic climate change has strongly increased the probability of a warm summer, such as the one observed 2018, occurring in Sweden. Despite this, we still find such summers in the pre-industrial climate in our simulations, albeit with a lower probability.

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Section: How Extreme Was the Warm Summer Of 2018 Insupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The extremely warm summer of 2018 in Sweden – set in a historical context

et al. 2020

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“…Note that risk ratios reported here depend on the selected metric, the choice of exceedance threshold of critical fire weather conditions, time period and spatial scale on which the FWI and KBDI are aggregated. Given that increasing the spatial scale generally reduces interannual variability which in turn increases the risk ratio (Angélil et al, 2018;Leach et al, 2020;Yiou et al, 2020), the risk ratios reported here in the Mediterranean region are likely lower (larger) than those expected on broader (smaller) regions. (Figure 2A) and KBDI mean ( Figure 2C) during 2008-2017 both show a strong latitudinal gradient, with higher fire danger level in the French Mediterranean.…”

Section: The 2003 Fire Weather Seasonmentioning

confidence: 75%

Attributing Increases in Fire Weather to Anthropogenic Climate Change Over France

et al. 2020

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“…For example, Pascal Yiou and colleagues defined the heat wave across a larger spatial area and a longer temporal extent (July 15-August 2, 2018); this approach increased the climate signal and concluded that the likelihood of occurrence of the heat wave was about 100 times more likely, compared with four times more likely as found in an earlier study. 18 ▸ HEALTH IMPACTS: The Public Health Agency of Sweden estimated an excess mortality of 750 deaths in Sweden during July 2-August 5, 2018, with more than 600 attributed to higher temperatures when compared with the same weeks in 2017. 19 A Public Health England study attributed 409 excess deaths above baseline in the subgroup of people age sixty-five and older to the heat wave in that country during July 21-29, 2018.…”

Section: Study Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Detection And Attribution To Quantify How Climate Change Is Affecting Health

et al. 2020

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The question of whether, how, and to what extent climate change is affecting health is central to many climate and health studies. We describe a set of formal methods, termed detection and attribution, used by climatologists to determine whether a climate trend or extreme event has changed and to estimate the extent to which climate change influenced that change. We discuss events where changing weather patterns were attributed to climate change and extend these analyses to include health impacts from heat waves in 2018 and 2019 in Europe and Japan, and we show how such impact attribution could be applied to melting ice roads in the Arctic. Documenting the causal chain from emissions of greenhouse gases to observed human health outcomes is important input into risk assessments that prioritize health system preparedness and response interventions and into financial investments and communication about potential risk to policy makers and to the public.

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Analyses of the Northern European Summer Heatwave of 2018

Cited by 57 publications

References 13 publications

The extremely warm summer of 2018 in Sweden – set in a historical context

The extremely warm summer of 2018 in Sweden – set in a historical context

Attributing Increases in Fire Weather to Anthropogenic Climate Change Over France

Using Detection And Attribution To Quantify How Climate Change Is Affecting Health

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