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Effects of 0.5 °C less global warming on climate extremes in the contiguous United States

Climate Dynamics volume 57, pages 303–319 (2021)Cite this article

Abstract

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests limiting global warming to 1.5 °C compared to 2 °C would avoid dangerous impacts of anthropogenic climate change and ensure a more sustainable society. As the vulnerability to global warming is regionally dependent, this study assesses the effects of 0.5 °C less global warming on climate extremes in the United States. Eight climate extreme indices are calculated based on Coupled Model Intercomparison Project—phase 5 (CMIP5), and North American—Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiments (NA-CORDEX) with and without bias correction. We evaluate the projected changes in temperature and precipitation extremes, and examine their differences between the 1.5 and 2 °C warming targets. Under a warming climate, both CMIP5 and NA-CORDEX show intensified heat extremes and reduced cold extremes across the country, intensified and more frequent heavy precipitation in large areas of the North, prolonged dry spells in some regions of the West, South, and Midwest, and more frequent drought events in the West. Results suggest that the 0.5 °C less global warming would avoid the intensification of climate extremes by 32–46% (35–42%) for heat extremes intensity (frequency) across the country and, by 23–41% for heavy precipitation intensity in the North, South, and Southeast. The changes in annual heavy precipitation intensity are mainly contributed by winter and spring. However, impacts of the limited warming on the frequency of heavy precipitation, dry spell, and drought frequency are only evident in a few regions. Although uncertainties are found among the climate models and emission scenarios, our results highlight the benefits of limiting warming at 1.5 °C in order to reduce the risks of climate extremes associated with global warming.

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Code availability

Data analysis is performed using NCAR Command Language (NCL). NCL codes are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Illinois State Water Survey, Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. All views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of these institutions. The authors would like to thank David Kristovich for his review of this manuscript. We acknowledge the NA-CORDEX climate modeling groups for producing and making available the model output. All the NA-CORDEX data are obtained from the NCAR Climate Data Gateway (https://www.earthsystemgrid.org/search/cordexsearch.html). We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP the US Department of Energy’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals. This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which is supported by National Science Foundation grant number ACI-1548562. The authors acknowledge the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC, http://www.tacc.utexas.edu) at The University of Texas at Austin for providing computing resources that have contributed to data analysis in this study. We also are grateful to the reviewers whose insightful comments helped improve our manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by the Illinois State Water Survey, Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

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  1. Climate and Atmospheric Sciences Section, Illinois State Water Survey, Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, 2204 Griffith Dr., Champaign, IL, 61820, USA

    Liang Chen & Trent W. Ford

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LC designed the study and performed data analysis. All authors contributed to the writing and revising of the paper.

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Correspondence to Liang Chen.

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All the NA-CORDEX data are obtained from the NCAR Climate Data Gateway (https://www.earthsystemgrid.org/search/cordexsearch.html). CMIP5 data are downloaded through the ESGF@DOE/LLNL node (https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/search/cmip5/).

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Chen, L., Ford, T.W. Effects of 0.5 °C less global warming on climate extremes in the contiguous United States. Clim Dyn 57, 303–319 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-05717-9

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