The results show that new characteristics of extreme weather and climate events have emerged around the world

2023 is the hottest year since 1850, with frequent extreme weather and climate events such as heat waves, extreme precipitation, rapid droughts and floods, wildfires, and sandstorms. Meteorologists have reviewed these extreme weather and climate events and found that new features are emerging. This achievement was jointly completed by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the British Meteorological Office, the Sorbonne University of France, the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology in Germany, the Argentine Institute of Glaciology and Environmental Sciences, and the Shanghai Typhoon Research Institute of the China Meteorological Administration, and was published in the academic journal "Advances in Atmospheric Science" on the 17th.

"One of the new features of extreme events is the seasonal variation of extreme events, and now they have the potential to occur in seasons that are unlikely to be possible. Robin Clark, one of the authors of the article and a senior researcher at the Met Office's Hadley Centre, said. For example, extreme heat events occurred earlier, with many regions such as southwestern Europe, North Africa, Southeast Asia, and Brazil experiencing extreme heat (even reaching more than 40°C) in the spring of 2023.

At the same time, high temperature and heat waves occurred simultaneously in many places in the northern hemisphere in the summer of 2023, and this spatial complexity is also one of the emerging characteristics of extreme events. The intensity of extreme precipitation was greatly exacerbated by the strong water vapor transport brought by severe cyclones, and the local precipitation in many places broke historical records.

Extreme weather and climate events also have the characteristics of continuous occurrence of temporal compounds, which often have a greater impact than the occurrence of extreme events alone. For example, some regions continue to experience multi-year droughts (such as central South America), while others (such as California and the Horn of Africa) have experienced a transition from multi-year drought to flooding.

In addition, the interaction between climate extremes and ecosystems is increasing. For example, in 2023, there will be large-scale wildfires and other events under warm and dry atmospheric conditions, and the carbon emissions generated by wildfires and their damage to natural carbon sinks are issues that cannot be ignored in achieving the global carbon neutrality goal.

These problems have posed new challenges to the study of extreme events. Zhang Wenxia, lead author and associate researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said: "Extreme weather and climate events are listed as the top global risk for the next decade by the World Economic Forum's latest Global Risks Report. In order to respond more effectively to extreme climate change, we need to pay attention not only to its intensifying trend, but also to the emerging new characteristics of extreme events, and to strengthen early warning of meteorological disasters. ”