Storylines of the 2018 Northern Hemisphere heatwave at pre-industrial and higher global warming levels

Wehrli, Kathrin; Hauser, Mathias; Seneviratne, Sonia I.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-11-855-2020

Articles | Volume 11, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-11-855-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-11-855-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 11, issue 4

Research article

|

21 Oct 2020

Research article |

| 21 Oct 2020

Storylines of the 2018 Northern Hemisphere heatwave at pre-industrial and higher global warming levels

Kathrin Wehrli, Mathias Hauser, and Sonia I. Seneviratne

Model code and software

SvenKotlarski/qmCH2018: qmCH2018 v1.0.1 S. Kotlarski https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3275571

Short summary

The 2018 summer was unusually hot for large areas in the Northern Hemisphere, and heatwaves on three continents led to major impacts on agriculture and society. This study investigates storylines for the extreme 2018 summer, given the observed atmospheric circulation but different levels of background global warming. The results reveal a strong contribution by the present-day level of global warming and show a dramatic outlook for similar events in a warmer climate.