Future Temperature Extremes Will Be More Harmful: A New Critical Factor for Improved Forecasts

Abstract

There is increasing evidence that extreme weather events such as frequent and intense cold spells and heat waves cause unprecedented deaths and diseases in both developed and developing countries. Thus, they require extensive and immediate research to limit the risks involved. Average temperatures in Europe in June–July 2019 were the hottest ever measured and attributed to climate change. The problem, however, of a thorough study of natural climate change is the lack of experimental data from the long past, where anthropogenic activity was then very limited. Today, this problem can be successfully resolved using, inter alia, biological indicators that have provided reliable environmental information for thousands of years in the past. The present study used high-resolution quantitative reconstruction data derived from biological records of Lake Silvaplana sediments covering the period 1181–1945. The purpose of this study was to determine whether a slight temperature change in the past could trigger current or future intense temperature change or changes. Modern analytical tools were used for this purpose, which eventually showed that temperature fluctuations were persistent. That is, they exhibit long memory with scaling behavior, which means that an increase (decrease) in temperature in the past was always followed by another increase (decrease) in the future with multiple amplitudes. Therefore, the increase in the frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme temperature events due to climate change will be more pronounced than expected. This will affect human well-being and mortality more than that estimated in today’s modeling scenarios. The scaling property detected here can be used for more accurate monthly to decadal forecasting of extreme temperature events. Thus, it is possible to develop improved early warning systems that will reduce the public health risk at local, national, and international levels.

Spatial and Temporal Variation Characteristics of Heatwaves in Recent Decades over China

“…According to Hu et al [58], heatwaves result in higher mortality rates and even suicides in in Shenzhen, China. In a nutshell, heatwaves are going to intensify in China in the future in response to climate change, and this perilous phenomenon requires preparation and mitigation programs to be in place to either avoid or mitigate the impact of extreme weather events due to climate change [48,59].…”

Evaluating the Mutual Relationship between IPAT/Kaya Identity Index and ODIAC-Based GOSAT Fossil-Fuel CO2 Flux: Potential and Constraints in Utilizing Decomposed Variables

“…The decomposed variables contain instructive information about the anthropogenic CO 2 -emitting activities. Many authors, for example, demonstrated that atmospheric CO 2 concentrations grow linearly with the five decomposed variables (GDP, TEC, EC, population, and CO 2 emissions from fossil fuel) [45][46][47]. They are the representative parameters related to the direct CO 2 emitted from anthropogenic activities.…”

Atmospheric pollution in the ten most populated US cities. Evidence of persistence

“…Long memory (or long range dependence) is a feature of the data that is characterized by a high level of dependence between values which are far apart in time. This property has been found to be present in many series in different disciplines such as finance and economics ( Gil-Alana and Moreno, 2012 ; Abritti et al., 2017 ; Kalemkerian and Sosa, 2020 ; Murialdo et al., 2020 ; Qiu et al., 2020 ); climatology and meteorology ( Gil-Alana, 2005 ; 2008 ; 2017 ; Vyushin and Kushner, 2009 ; Efstathiou and Varotsos, 2010 , 2012 ; Franzke, 2012 ; Ludescher et al., 2016 ; Varotsos et al., 2016 ; Bunde, 2017 ; Yuan et al., 2019 ; Varotsos and Mazei, 2019 ; Bruneau et al., 2020 ; etc. ), but also in environmental sciences ( Barros et al., 2016 ; Tiwari et al., 2016 ; Gil-Alana and Solarin, 2018 ; Gil-Alana and Trani, 2019 ; Xayasouk et al., 2020 ).…”