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Climate change scenarios of heat waves in Central Europe and their uncertainties

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Abstract

The study examines climate change scenarios of Central European heat waves with a focus on related uncertainties in a large ensemble of regional climate model (RCM) simulations from the EURO-CORDEX and ENSEMBLES projects. Historical runs (1970–1999) driven by global climate models (GCMs) are evaluated against the E-OBS gridded data set in the first step. Although the RCMs are found to reproduce the frequency of heat waves quite well, those RCMs with the coarser grid (25 and 50 km) considerably overestimate the frequency of severe heat waves. This deficiency is improved in higher-resolution (12.5 km) EURO-CORDEX RCMs. In the near future (2020–2049), heat waves are projected to be nearly twice as frequent in comparison to the modelled historical period, and the increase is even larger for severe heat waves. Uncertainty originates mainly from the selection of RCMs and GCMs because the increase is similar for all concentration scenarios. For the late twenty-first century (2070–2099), a substantial increase in heat wave frequencies is projected, the magnitude of which depends mainly upon concentration scenario. Three to four heat waves per summer are projected in this period (compared to less than one in the recent climate), and severe heat waves are likely to become a regular phenomenon. This increment is primarily driven by a positive shift of temperature distribution, but changes in its scale and enhanced temporal autocorrelation of temperature also contribute to the projected increase in heat wave frequencies.

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Acknowledgements

The study was supported by the Czech Science Foundation, project 16-22000S, and the Charles University Grant Agency, student project no. 250215. The EURO-CORDEX simulations were carried out in several groups within the framework of the IMPACT2C FP7 project. The ENSEMBLES simulations were obtained from the ENSEMBLES project database funded within the EU-FP6. We also acknowledge the E-OBS data set from the same project, the data providers in the ECA&D project, and the National Sustainability Program I (NPU I), grant number LO1415 from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Atmospheric Physics CAS, Prague, Czech Republic

    Ondřej Lhotka & Jan Kyselý

  2. Global Change Research Institute CAS, Brno, Czech Republic

    Ondřej Lhotka & Aleš Farda

  3. Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

    Ondřej Lhotka

  4. Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic

    Jan Kyselý

  5. Czech Hydrometeorological Institute, Prague, Czech Republic

    Aleš Farda

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  1. Ondřej Lhotka
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Correspondence to Ondřej Lhotka.

Electronic supplementary material

Online Resource 1

List of regional climate models (RCM) from the EURO-CORDEX project with their respective driving data. ‘X’ denotes available simulations in 0.11° and 0.44° grids. (PDF 13 kb)

Online Resource 2

List of regional climate models (RCM) from the ENSEMBLES project. ‘*’ denotes simulations with limited 1971–2049 time span. (PDF 7 kb)

Online Resource 3

Relationships between (A) changes in 90th percentile and heat waves frequency and (B) changes in temporal autocorrelation and heat waves frequency in near future (2020–2049). Green colour represent simulations using the low-concentration RCP 4.5 scenario, orange colour depicts mid-concentration SRES A1B and red colour represents high-concentration RCP 8.5. Standard triangles illustrate simulations with 12.5 km grid, squares represents 25 km grid and inverse triangles depicts 50 km grid. Linear regression lines with 95% confidence interval are fitted. (TIFF 3190 kb)

High resolution (GIF 618 kb)

Online Resource 4

Same as Online Resource 3, but for the late twenty-first century. Note different scales of axes. (TIFF 3190 kb)

High resolution (GIF 614 kb)

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Lhotka, O., Kyselý, J. & Farda, A. Climate change scenarios of heat waves in Central Europe and their uncertainties. Theor Appl Climatol 131, 1043–1054 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-016-2031-3

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