Abstract
Extreme weather events and their consequential impacts have been a key feature of the climate in recent years in many parts of the world, with many partly attributed to ongoing global-scale warming. The past year, 2022, has been no exception, with further records being broken. The year was marked by unprecedented heatwaves and droughts with highly unusual spatial extent, duration and intensity, with one measure indicating an aggregated and overall intensity of extreme heat events worldwide not seen since at least 1950. The extreme drought measured by surface soil moisture covered 47.3% of global land areas in 2022, which was the second most widespread year since 1980. Here, we examine notable events of the year in five major regions of the world: China’s Yangtze River region, western Europe, the western U.S., the Horn of Africa and central South America. For each event, we review the potential roles of circulation, oceanic forcing (especially the “triple-dip” La Niña) and anthropogenic climate change, with an aim of understanding the extreme events in 2022 from a global perspective. This will serve as a reference for mechanism understanding, prediction and attribution of extreme events.
摘要
近年来不断突破历史记录的极端天气事件及其严重的社会经济影响得到社会各界的关注. 过去的2022年全球范围诸多地区受到史无前例的高温干旱的影响, 其空间范围、持续时间和强度不断突破新高. 本文采用极端事件累积强度指数, 首先衡量了2022年全球范围内极端高温和干旱事件强度, 指出2022年全球范围内极端高温事件的累积强度至少是 1950 年以来从未出现过的, 2022年表层土壤湿度表征的极端干旱覆盖了全球 47.3%的面积范围, 自1980年以来排名第二. 此外, 该工作围绕2022年全球受高温干旱影响最为显著的五个热点区域, 即中国长江流域、 西欧、 美国西部、 非洲之角和南美洲中南部地区, 系统回顾了大尺度环流、 海洋强迫(特别是“三重”拉尼娜现象)和人为气候变化的潜在作用, 目的是从全球角度总结当前对2022年极端高温干旱事件的整体认知程度, 并提出高温干旱研究面临的挑战和困难. 该研究简要介绍了作者团队基于中科院大气物理研究所大气环流模式GAMIL3.0建立的检测归因系统, 并对2022年长江流域高温事件日数做了归因分析, 指出人为外强迫会导致类似事件高温日数的发生风险增加11倍. 期待本文可为极端事件的过程理解、预测和归因研究提供科学参考.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42075037 and 42275033) and the UK–China Research and Innovation Partnership Fund through the Met Office Climate Science for Service Partnership (CSSP)-China programme as part of the Newton Fund. The CRU TS v. 4.07 datasets can be obtained from https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/hrg/. The GLEAM database v3.7a is available at https://www.gleam.eu/.
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This paper is a contribution to the 2nd Special Issue on Climate Science for Service Partnership China.
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Zhang, L., Yu, X., Zhou, T. et al. Understanding and Attribution of Extreme Heat and Drought Events in 2022: Current Situation and Future Challenges. Adv. Atmos. Sci. 40, 1941–1951 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-023-3171-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-023-3171-x