Global concurrent climate extremes exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change

Increases in concurrent climate extremes in different parts of the world threaten the ecosystem and our society. However, spatial patterns of these extremes and their past and future changes remain unclear. Here, we develop a statistical framework to test for spatial dependence and show widespread dependence of temperature and precipitation extremes in observations and model simulations, with more frequent than expected concurrence of extremes around the world. Historical anthropogenic forcing has strengthened the concurrence of temperature extremes over 56% of 946 global paired regions, particularly in the tropics, but has not yet significantly affected concurrent precipitation extremes during 1901-2020. The…

• UD
  U.S. Department of Energy
• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China
• YS
  Young Scientists Fund
• NK
  National Key Research and Development Program of China

  Award: 2022YFF0802400
• FR
  Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities