Magnitude of extreme heat waves in present climate and their projection in a warming world

Abstract An extreme heat wave occurred in Russia in the summer of 2010. It had serious impacts on humans and natural ecosystems, it was the strongest recorded globally in recent decades and exceeded in amplitude and spatial extent the previous hottest European summer in 2003. Earlier studies have not succeeded in comparing the magnitude of heat waves across continents and in time. This study introduces a new Heat Wave Magnitude Index that can be compared over space and time. The index is based on the analysis of daily maximum temperature in order to classify the strongest heat waves that occurred worldwide during the three study periods 1980–1990, 1991–2001, and 2002–2012. In addition, multimodel ensemble…

• NF
  Norges Forskningsråd