Underestimated Change of Wet‐Bulb Temperatures Over East and South China

Freychet, Nicolas; Tett, Simon F. B.; Zeng, Yan; Li, Z.

doi:10.1029/2019gl086140

Cited by 41 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…First, this study focused on the daytime-nighttime compound heat waves, which does not fully take into account the additively compounding effect of humidity on the magnitude of heat waves. One of the reasons is the lack of universal metric of heat wave magnitude that accounts for the combined effect of heat and humidity, although a few recent studies have drawn attention to the so-called humid heat waves in China (Freychet et al, 2020). In addition, there is no humidity data in the high-resolution observations and the NEX-GDDP data set.…”

Section: 1029/2020ef001716mentioning

confidence: 99%

Future Risks of Unprecedented Compound Heat Waves Over Three Vast Urban Agglomerations in China

et al. 2020

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 Unprecedented compound heat waves will occur on a regular basis in three urban agglomerations in China since mid-21st century under RCP8.5  The likelihood of unprecedented compound heat waves in a 1.5 ℃ warmer world will halve compared to 2 ℃ warming scenario  Population exposures to future unprecedented compound heat waves will increase by nearly 70, 90, and 60 million by the end of this century

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Section: 1029/2020ef001716mentioning

confidence: 99%

Future Risks of Unprecedented Compound Heat Waves Over Three Vast Urban Agglomerations in China

et al. 2020

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“…The predictions of this analytical model were shown to be broadly consistent with the observed trends in land RH given the observed warming over ocean, despite considerable variability about the best-fit trend in land RH that could be related to other factors such as changes in atmospheric circulations and land-surface properties. The detected decline in land surface RH should be however considered with caution at the regional scale given the possible change in measurement methods and the contrasted multi-decadal trends which can be found between raw and homogeneized in situ observations (Freychet et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drivers of the enhanced decline of land near-surface relative humidity to abrupt 4xCO2 in CNRM-CM6-1

et al. 2020

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Projected changes in near-surface relative humidity (RH) remain highly model-dependent over land and may have been underestimated by the former generation global climate models. Here the focus in on the recent CNRM-CM6-1 model, which shows an enhanced land surface drying in response to quadrupled atmospheric CO2 compared to its CNRM-CM5 predecessor. Atmosphere-only experiments with prescribed sea surface temperature (SST) are used to decompose the simulated RH changes into separate responses to uniform SST warming, pattern of SST anomalies, changes in seaice concentration, as well as direct radiative and physiological CO2 effects. Results show that the strong drying simulated by CNRM-CM6-1 is due to both fast CO2 effects and a SST-mediated response. The enhanced drying compared to CNRM-CM5 is partly due to the introduction of a physiological CO2 effect that was not accounted for in CNRM-CM5. The global ocean warming also contributes to the RH decline over land, in reasonable agreement with the moisture advection mechanism proposed by earlier studies which however does not fully capture the contrasted RH response between the two CNRM models. The SST anomaly pattern is a significant driver of changes in RH humidity at the regional scale, which are partly explained by changes in atmospheric circulation. The improved land surface model may also contribute to a stronger soil moisture feedback in CNRM-CM6-1, which can amplify the surface aridity induced by global warming and, thereby, lead to a non-linear response of RH.

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“…People living in areas with higher humidity experience a relatively higher risk of death than those living in areas with lower humidity (Conti et al ., 2005). Since humans cool themselves through sweating, the physiological impacts of HWs may be better captured by human‐perceived temperature that characterizes the combined effects of high temperatures and humidity (Sherwood and Huber, 2010; Pal and Eltahir, 2015; Luo and Lau, 2019; Freychet et al ., 2020; Li et al ., 2020a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Different changes in dry and humid heat waves over China

Chan

Luo

2020

Intl Journal of Climatology

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Heat waves (HWs) are expected to increase in many parts of the world under climate warming. However, most existing studies examined the changes in HWs that are derived from air temperature only, possible different changes in humid HWs that consider the combined effects of relative humidity (RH) are much less understood. This study investigates the spatial and temporal changes in two different HW types, namely, dry and humid HWs, in China from 1961 to 2014. Analysis results show that, on average, humid HWs in China occur 20% more frequently than dry HWs. Dry HWs are more commonly located in northern China, while humid events mainly appear in monsoonal southern and eastern regions. It is also found that all measures of both dry and humid HWs across China have been increasing during the past decades, and humid HWs exhibit a more prominent intensifying trend than dry ones. In particular, the national mean frequency, participating days, magnitude, and duration of dry (humid) HWs increased by 0.061 (0.069) events decade−1, 0.32 (0.39) days decade−1, 0.53 (0.62) °C decade−1, and 0.19 (0.21) days decade−1, respectively. These trends vary in different parts of China. The largest increment of dry HW frequency appears in the arid region of northwest China, while the fastest increase of the humid HW frequency is observed in southeastern China. Given the additional stress induced by high humidity to extreme high temperature, we suggest that future climate change mitigation and adaption should consider the change and impacts of humid heat events.

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Underestimated Change of Wet‐Bulb Temperatures Over East and South China

Cited by 41 publications

References 21 publications

Future Risks of Unprecedented Compound Heat Waves Over Three Vast Urban Agglomerations in China

Future Risks of Unprecedented Compound Heat Waves Over Three Vast Urban Agglomerations in China

Drivers of the enhanced decline of land near-surface relative humidity to abrupt 4xCO2 in CNRM-CM6-1

Different changes in dry and humid heat waves over China

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