Articles | Volume 14, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-1333-2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-1333-2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| 
21 Dec 2023
Research article |
| 21 Dec 2023
| 21 Dec 2023
Extending MESMER-X: a spatially resolved Earth system model emulator for fire weather and soil moisture
Yann Quilcaille
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Department of Environmental Systems Science, Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Lukas Gudmundsson
Department of Environmental Systems Science, Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Sonia I. Seneviratne
Department of Environmental Systems Science, Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Related authors
Hao Pan, Lukas Gudmundsson, Mathias Hauser, Jonas Schwaab, Yann Quilcaille, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3052, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3052, 2025
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics (NPG).
Short summary
Short summary
Regional climate models (RCMs) provide critical detailed information about the local climate. However, running RCM simulations requires powerful computers and is computationally expensive. This study present a probabilistic RCM emulator, MESMER-RCM, a data-driven statistical model. MESMER-RCM can generate large ensembles of synthetic, yet physically plausible fine-scale 2-meter temperature projections spanning multiple decades at negligible computational overhead.
Felix Jäger, Jonas Schwaab, Yann Quilcaille, Michael Windisch, Jonathan Doelman, Stefan Frank, Mykola Gusti, Petr Havlik, Florian Humpenöder, Andrey Lessa Derci Augustynczik, Christoph Müller, Kanishka Balu Narayan, Ryan Sebastian Padrón, Alexander Popp, Detlef van Vuuren, Michael Wögerer, and Sonia Isabelle Seneviratne
Earth Syst. Dynam., 15, 1055–1071, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-1055-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-1055-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Climate change mitigation strategies developed with socioeconomic models rely on the widespread (re)planting of trees to limit global warming below 2°. However, most of these models neglect climate-driven shifts in forest damage like fires. By assessing existing mitigation scenarios, we show the exposure of projected forestation areas to fire-promoting weather conditions. Our study highlights the problem of ignoring climate-driven shifts in forest damage and ways to address it.
Yann Quilcaille, Fulden Batibeniz, Andreia F. S. Ribeiro, Ryan S. Padrón, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 2153–2177, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2153-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2153-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
We present a new database of four annual fire weather indicators over 1850–2100 and over all land areas. In a 3°C warmer world with respect to preindustrial times, the mean fire weather would increase on average by at least 66% in both intensity and duration and even triple for 1-in-10-year events. The dataset is a freely available resource for fire danger studies and beyond, highlighting that the best course of action would require limiting global warming as much as possible.
Yann Quilcaille, Thomas Gasser, Philippe Ciais, and Olivier Boucher
Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 1129–1161, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-1129-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-1129-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
The model OSCAR is a simple climate model, meaning its representation of the Earth system is simplified but calibrated on models of higher complexity. Here, we diagnose its latest version using a total of 99 experiments in a probabilistic framework and under observational constraints. OSCAR v3.1 shows good agreement with observations, complex Earth system models and emerging properties. Some points for improvements are identified, such as the ocean carbon cycle.
Irina Melnikova, Olivier Boucher, Patricia Cadule, Katsumasa Tanaka, Thomas Gasser, Tomohiro Hajima, Yann Quilcaille, Hideo Shiogama, Roland Séférian, Kaoru Tachiiri, Nicolas Vuichard, Tokuta Yokohata, and Philippe Ciais
Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 779–794, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-779-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-779-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
The deployment of bioenergy crops for capturing carbon from the atmosphere facilitates global warming mitigation via generating negative CO2 emissions. Here, we explored the consequences of large-scale energy crops deployment on the land carbon cycle. The land-use change for energy crops leads to carbon emissions and loss of future potential increase in carbon uptake by natural ecosystems. This impact should be taken into account by the modeling teams and accounted for in mitigation policies.
Thomas Gasser, Philippe Ciais, Olivier Boucher, Yann Quilcaille, Maxime Tortora, Laurent Bopp, and Didier Hauglustaine
Geosci. Model Dev., 10, 271–319, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-271-2017, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-271-2017, 2017
Short summary
Short summary
Simple models of the Earth system are useful, especially because of their high computing efficiency. This work describes the OSCAR model: a new simple Earth system model calibrated on state-of-the-art complex models. It will add to the pool of the few simple models currently used by the community, and it will therefore improve the robustness of future studies. Its source code is available upon request.
Hao Pan, Lukas Gudmundsson, Mathias Hauser, Jonas Schwaab, Yann Quilcaille, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3052, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3052, 2025
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics (NPG).
Short summary
Short summary
Regional climate models (RCMs) provide critical detailed information about the local climate. However, running RCM simulations requires powerful computers and is computationally expensive. This study present a probabilistic RCM emulator, MESMER-RCM, a data-driven statistical model. MESMER-RCM can generate large ensembles of synthetic, yet physically plausible fine-scale 2-meter temperature projections spanning multiple decades at negligible computational overhead.
Piers M. Forster, Chris Smith, Tristram Walsh, William F. Lamb, Robin Lamboll, Christophe Cassou, Mathias Hauser, Zeke Hausfather, June-Yi Lee, Matthew D. Palmer, Karina von Schuckmann, Aimée B. A. Slangen, Sophie Szopa, Blair Trewin, Jeongeun Yun, Nathan P. Gillett, Stuart Jenkins, H. Damon Matthews, Krishnan Raghavan, Aurélien Ribes, Joeri Rogelj, Debbie Rosen, Xuebin Zhang, Myles Allen, Lara Aleluia Reis, Robbie M. Andrew, Richard A. Betts, Alex Borger, Jiddu A. Broersma, Samantha N. Burgess, Lijing Cheng, Pierre Friedlingstein, Catia M. Domingues, Marco Gambarini, Thomas Gasser, Johannes Gütschow, Masayoshi Ishii, Christopher Kadow, John Kennedy, Rachel E. Killick, Paul B. Krummel, Aurélien Liné, Didier P. Monselesan, Colin Morice, Jens Mühle, Vaishali Naik, Glen P. Peters, Anna Pirani, Julia Pongratz, Jan C. Minx, Matthew Rigby, Robert Rohde, Abhishek Savita, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Peter Thorne, Christopher Wells, Luke M. Western, Guido R. van der Werf, Susan E. Wijffels, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, and Panmao Zhai
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 2641–2680, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-2641-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-2641-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
In a rapidly changing climate, evidence-based decision-making benefits from up-to-date and timely information. Here we compile monitoring datasets to track real-world changes over time. To make our work relevant to policymakers, we follow methods from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Human activities are increasing the Earth's energy imbalance and driving faster sea-level rise compared to the IPCC assessment.
Hannes Müller Schmied, Simon Newland Gosling, Marlo Garnsworthy, Laura Müller, Camelia-Eliza Telteu, Atiq Kainan Ahmed, Lauren Seaby Andersen, Julien Boulange, Peter Burek, Jinfeng Chang, He Chen, Lukas Gudmundsson, Manolis Grillakis, Luca Guillaumot, Naota Hanasaki, Aristeidis Koutroulis, Rohini Kumar, Guoyong Leng, Junguo Liu, Xingcai Liu, Inga Menke, Vimal Mishra, Yadu Pokhrel, Oldrich Rakovec, Luis Samaniego, Yusuke Satoh, Harsh Lovekumar Shah, Mikhail Smilovic, Tobias Stacke, Edwin Sutanudjaja, Wim Thiery, Athanasios Tsilimigkras, Yoshihide Wada, Niko Wanders, and Tokuta Yokohata
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 2409–2425, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2409-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2409-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Global water models contribute to the evaluation of important natural and societal issues but are – as all models – simplified representation of reality. So, there are many ways to calculate the water fluxes and storages. This paper presents a visualization of 16 global water models using a standardized visualization and the pathway towards this common understanding. Next to academic education purposes, we envisage that these diagrams will help researchers, model developers, and data users.
Basil Kraft, Michael Schirmer, William H. Aeberhard, Massimiliano Zappa, Sonia I. Seneviratne, and Lukas Gudmundsson
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 1061–1082, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1061-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1061-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
This study reconstructs daily runoff in Switzerland (1962–2023) using a deep-learning model, providing a spatially contiguous dataset on a medium-sized catchment grid. The model outperforms traditional hydrological methods, revealing shifts in Swiss water resources, including more frequent dry years and declining summer runoff. The reconstruction is publicly available.
Martin Hirschi, Pietro Stradiotti, Bas Crezee, Wouter Dorigo, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 397–425, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-397-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-397-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
We investigate the potential of long-term satellite and reanalysis products for characterising soil drying by analysing their 2000–2022 soil moisture trends and their representation of agroecological drought events of this period. Soil moisture trends are globally diverse and partly contradictory between products. This also affects the products' drought-detection capacity. Based on the best-estimate products, consistent soil drying is observed over more than 40 % of the land area covered.
Sarah Schöngart, Lukas Gudmundsson, Mathias Hauser, Peter Pfleiderer, Quentin Lejeune, Shruti Nath, Sonia Isabelle Seneviratne, and Carl-Friedrich Schleussner
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 8283–8320, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8283-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8283-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Precipitation and temperature are two of the most impact-relevant climatic variables. Yet, projecting future precipitation and temperature data under different emission scenarios relies on complex models that are computationally expensive. In this study, we propose a method that allows us to generate monthly means of local precipitation and temperature at low computational costs. Our modelling framework is particularly useful for all downstream applications of climate model data.
Felix Jäger, Jonas Schwaab, Yann Quilcaille, Michael Windisch, Jonathan Doelman, Stefan Frank, Mykola Gusti, Petr Havlik, Florian Humpenöder, Andrey Lessa Derci Augustynczik, Christoph Müller, Kanishka Balu Narayan, Ryan Sebastian Padrón, Alexander Popp, Detlef van Vuuren, Michael Wögerer, and Sonia Isabelle Seneviratne
Earth Syst. Dynam., 15, 1055–1071, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-1055-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-1055-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Climate change mitigation strategies developed with socioeconomic models rely on the widespread (re)planting of trees to limit global warming below 2°. However, most of these models neglect climate-driven shifts in forest damage like fires. By assessing existing mitigation scenarios, we show the exposure of projected forestation areas to fire-promoting weather conditions. Our study highlights the problem of ignoring climate-driven shifts in forest damage and ways to address it.
Christoph Nathanael von Matt, Regula Muelchi, Lukas Gudmundsson, and Olivia Martius
Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 24, 1975–2001, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-24-1975-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-24-1975-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
The simultaneous occurrence of meteorological (precipitation), agricultural (soil moisture), and hydrological (streamflow) drought can lead to augmented impacts. By analysing drought indices derived from the newest climate scenarios for Switzerland (CH2018, Hydro-CH2018), we show that with climate change the concurrence of all drought types will increase in all studied regions of Switzerland. Our results stress the benefits of and need for both mitigation and adaptation measures at early stages.
Malte Meinshausen, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Kathleen Beyer, Greg Bodeker, Olivier Boucher, Josep G. Canadell, John S. Daniel, Aïda Diongue-Niang, Fatima Driouech, Erich Fischer, Piers Forster, Michael Grose, Gerrit Hansen, Zeke Hausfather, Tatiana Ilyina, Jarmo S. Kikstra, Joyce Kimutai, Andrew D. King, June-Yi Lee, Chris Lennard, Tabea Lissner, Alexander Nauels, Glen P. Peters, Anna Pirani, Gian-Kasper Plattner, Hans Pörtner, Joeri Rogelj, Maisa Rojas, Joyashree Roy, Bjørn H. Samset, Benjamin M. Sanderson, Roland Séférian, Sonia Seneviratne, Christopher J. Smith, Sophie Szopa, Adelle Thomas, Diana Urge-Vorsatz, Guus J. M. Velders, Tokuta Yokohata, Tilo Ziehn, and Zebedee Nicholls
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 4533–4559, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4533-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4533-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
The scientific community is considering new scenarios to succeed RCPs and SSPs for the next generation of Earth system model runs to project future climate change. To contribute to that effort, we reflect on relevant policy and scientific research questions and suggest categories for representative emission pathways. These categories are tailored to the Paris Agreement long-term temperature goal, high-risk outcomes in the absence of further climate policy and worlds “that could have been”.
Piers M. Forster, Chris Smith, Tristram Walsh, William F. Lamb, Robin Lamboll, Bradley Hall, Mathias Hauser, Aurélien Ribes, Debbie Rosen, Nathan P. Gillett, Matthew D. Palmer, Joeri Rogelj, Karina von Schuckmann, Blair Trewin, Myles Allen, Robbie Andrew, Richard A. Betts, Alex Borger, Tim Boyer, Jiddu A. Broersma, Carlo Buontempo, Samantha Burgess, Chiara Cagnazzo, Lijing Cheng, Pierre Friedlingstein, Andrew Gettelman, Johannes Gütschow, Masayoshi Ishii, Stuart Jenkins, Xin Lan, Colin Morice, Jens Mühle, Christopher Kadow, John Kennedy, Rachel E. Killick, Paul B. Krummel, Jan C. Minx, Gunnar Myhre, Vaishali Naik, Glen P. Peters, Anna Pirani, Julia Pongratz, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Sophie Szopa, Peter Thorne, Mahesh V. M. Kovilakam, Elisa Majamäki, Jukka-Pekka Jalkanen, Margreet van Marle, Rachel M. Hoesly, Robert Rohde, Dominik Schumacher, Guido van der Werf, Russell Vose, Kirsten Zickfeld, Xuebin Zhang, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, and Panmao Zhai
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 2625–2658, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2625-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2625-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
This paper tracks some key indicators of global warming through time, from 1850 through to the end of 2023. It is designed to give an authoritative estimate of global warming to date and its causes. We find that in 2023, global warming reached 1.3 °C and is increasing at over 0.2 °C per decade. This is caused by all-time-high greenhouse gas emissions.
Steven J. De Hertog, Carmen E. Lopez-Fabara, Ruud van der Ent, Jessica Keune, Diego G. Miralles, Raphael Portmann, Sebastian Schemm, Felix Havermann, Suqi Guo, Fei Luo, Iris Manola, Quentin Lejeune, Julia Pongratz, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Sonia I. Seneviratne, and Wim Thiery
Earth Syst. Dynam., 15, 265–291, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-265-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-265-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Changes in land use are crucial to achieve lower global warming. However, despite their importance, the effects of these changes on moisture fluxes are poorly understood. We analyse land cover and management scenarios in three climate models involving cropland expansion, afforestation, and irrigation. Results show largely consistent influences on moisture fluxes, with cropland expansion causing a drying and reduced local moisture recycling, while afforestation and irrigation show the opposite.
Dominik L. Schumacher, Mariam Zachariah, Friederike Otto, Clair Barnes, Sjoukje Philip, Sarah Kew, Maja Vahlberg, Roop Singh, Dorothy Heinrich, Julie Arrighi, Maarten van Aalst, Mathias Hauser, Martin Hirschi, Verena Bessenbacher, Lukas Gudmundsson, Hiroko K. Beaudoing, Matthew Rodell, Sihan Li, Wenchang Yang, Gabriel A. Vecchi, Luke J. Harrington, Flavio Lehner, Gianpaolo Balsamo, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Earth Syst. Dynam., 15, 131–154, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-131-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-131-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
The 2022 summer was accompanied by widespread soil moisture deficits, including an unprecedented drought in Europe. Combining several observation-based estimates and models, we find that such an event has become at least 5 and 20 times more likely due to human-induced climate change in western Europe and the northern extratropics, respectively. Strong regional warming fuels soil desiccation; hence, projections indicate even more potent future droughts as we progress towards a 2 °C warmer world.
Shruti Nath, Lukas Gudmundsson, Jonas Schwaab, Gregory Duveiller, Steven J. De Hertog, Suqi Guo, Felix Havermann, Fei Luo, Iris Manola, Julia Pongratz, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Carl F. Schleussner, Wim Thiery, and Quentin Lejeune
Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 4283–4313, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-4283-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-4283-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
Tree cover changes play a significant role in climate mitigation and adaptation. Their regional impacts are key in informing national-level decisions and prioritising areas for conservation efforts. We present a first step towards exploring these regional impacts using a simple statistical device, i.e. emulator. The emulator only needs to train on climate model outputs representing the maximal impacts of aff-, re-, and deforestation, from which it explores plausible in-between outcomes itself.
Piers M. Forster, Christopher J. Smith, Tristram Walsh, William F. Lamb, Robin Lamboll, Mathias Hauser, Aurélien Ribes, Debbie Rosen, Nathan Gillett, Matthew D. Palmer, Joeri Rogelj, Karina von Schuckmann, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Blair Trewin, Xuebin Zhang, Myles Allen, Robbie Andrew, Arlene Birt, Alex Borger, Tim Boyer, Jiddu A. Broersma, Lijing Cheng, Frank Dentener, Pierre Friedlingstein, José M. Gutiérrez, Johannes Gütschow, Bradley Hall, Masayoshi Ishii, Stuart Jenkins, Xin Lan, June-Yi Lee, Colin Morice, Christopher Kadow, John Kennedy, Rachel Killick, Jan C. Minx, Vaishali Naik, Glen P. Peters, Anna Pirani, Julia Pongratz, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Sophie Szopa, Peter Thorne, Robert Rohde, Maisa Rojas Corradi, Dominik Schumacher, Russell Vose, Kirsten Zickfeld, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, and Panmao Zhai
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 2295–2327, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2295-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2295-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
This is a critical decade for climate action, but there is no annual tracking of the level of human-induced warming. We build on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports that are authoritative but published infrequently to create a set of key global climate indicators that can be tracked through time. Our hope is that this becomes an important annual publication that policymakers, media, scientists and the public can refer to.
Steven J. De Hertog, Felix Havermann, Inne Vanderkelen, Suqi Guo, Fei Luo, Iris Manola, Dim Coumou, Edouard L. Davin, Gregory Duveiller, Quentin Lejeune, Julia Pongratz, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Sonia I. Seneviratne, and Wim Thiery
Earth Syst. Dynam., 14, 629–667, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-629-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-629-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
Land cover and land management changes are important strategies for future land-based mitigation. We investigate the climate effects of cropland expansion, afforestation, irrigation and wood harvesting using three Earth system models. Results show that these have important implications for surface temperature where the land cover and/or management change occur and in remote areas. Idealized afforestation causes global warming, which might offset the cooling effect from enhanced carbon uptake.
Yann Quilcaille, Fulden Batibeniz, Andreia F. S. Ribeiro, Ryan S. Padrón, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 2153–2177, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2153-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2153-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
We present a new database of four annual fire weather indicators over 1850–2100 and over all land areas. In a 3°C warmer world with respect to preindustrial times, the mean fire weather would increase on average by at least 66% in both intensity and duration and even triple for 1-in-10-year events. The dataset is a freely available resource for fire danger studies and beyond, highlighting that the best course of action would require limiting global warming as much as possible.
Steven J. De Hertog, Carmen E. Lopez-Fabara, Ruud van der Ent, Jessica Keune, Diego G. Miralles, Raphael Portmann, Sebastian Schemm, Felix Havermann, Suqi Guo, Fei Luo, Iris Manola, Quentin Lejeune, Julia Pongratz, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Sonia I. Seneviratne, and Wim Thiery
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-953, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-953, 2023
Preprint archived
Short summary
Short summary
Land cover and management changes can affect the climate and water availability. In this study we use climate model simulations of extreme global land cover changes (afforestation, deforestation) and land management changes (irrigation) to understand the effects on the global water cycle and local to continental water availability. We show that cropland expansion generally leads to higher evaporation and lower amounts of precipitation and afforestation and irrigation expansion to the opposite.
Francisco José Cuesta-Valero, Hugo Beltrami, Almudena García-García, Gerhard Krinner, Moritz Langer, Andrew H. MacDougall, Jan Nitzbon, Jian Peng, Karina von Schuckmann, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Wim Thiery, Inne Vanderkelen, and Tonghua Wu
Earth Syst. Dynam., 14, 609–627, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-609-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-609-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
Climate change is caused by the accumulated heat in the Earth system, with the land storing the second largest amount of this extra heat. Here, new estimates of continental heat storage are obtained, including changes in inland-water heat storage and permafrost heat storage in addition to changes in ground heat storage. We also argue that heat gains in all three components should be monitored independently of their magnitude due to heat-dependent processes affecting society and ecosystems.
Fulden Batibeniz, Mathias Hauser, and Sonia Isabelle Seneviratne
Earth Syst. Dynam., 14, 485–505, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-485-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-485-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
We study single and concurrent heatwaves, droughts, precipitation, and wind extremes. Globally, these extremes become more frequent and affect larger land areas under future warming, with several countries experiencing extreme events every single month. Concurrent heatwaves–droughts (precipitation–wind) are projected to increase the most in mid–high-latitude countries (tropics). Every mitigation action to avoid further warming will reduce the number of people exposed to extreme weather events.
Karina von Schuckmann, Audrey Minière, Flora Gues, Francisco José Cuesta-Valero, Gottfried Kirchengast, Susheel Adusumilli, Fiammetta Straneo, Michaël Ablain, Richard P. Allan, Paul M. Barker, Hugo Beltrami, Alejandro Blazquez, Tim Boyer, Lijing Cheng, John Church, Damien Desbruyeres, Han Dolman, Catia M. Domingues, Almudena García-García, Donata Giglio, John E. Gilson, Maximilian Gorfer, Leopold Haimberger, Maria Z. Hakuba, Stefan Hendricks, Shigeki Hosoda, Gregory C. Johnson, Rachel Killick, Brian King, Nicolas Kolodziejczyk, Anton Korosov, Gerhard Krinner, Mikael Kuusela, Felix W. Landerer, Moritz Langer, Thomas Lavergne, Isobel Lawrence, Yuehua Li, John Lyman, Florence Marti, Ben Marzeion, Michael Mayer, Andrew H. MacDougall, Trevor McDougall, Didier Paolo Monselesan, Jan Nitzbon, Inès Otosaka, Jian Peng, Sarah Purkey, Dean Roemmich, Kanako Sato, Katsunari Sato, Abhishek Savita, Axel Schweiger, Andrew Shepherd, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Leon Simons, Donald A. Slater, Thomas Slater, Andrea K. Steiner, Toshio Suga, Tanguy Szekely, Wim Thiery, Mary-Louise Timmermans, Inne Vanderkelen, Susan E. Wjiffels, Tonghua Wu, and Michael Zemp
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 1675–1709, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-1675-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-1675-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
Earth's climate is out of energy balance, and this study quantifies how much heat has consequently accumulated over the past decades (ocean: 89 %, land: 6 %, cryosphere: 4 %, atmosphere: 1 %). Since 1971, this accumulated heat reached record values at an increasing pace. The Earth heat inventory provides a comprehensive view on the status and expectation of global warming, and we call for an implementation of this global climate indicator into the Paris Agreement’s Global Stocktake.
Yann Quilcaille, Thomas Gasser, Philippe Ciais, and Olivier Boucher
Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 1129–1161, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-1129-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-1129-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
The model OSCAR is a simple climate model, meaning its representation of the Earth system is simplified but calibrated on models of higher complexity. Here, we diagnose its latest version using a total of 99 experiments in a probabilistic framework and under observational constraints. OSCAR v3.1 shows good agreement with observations, complex Earth system models and emerging properties. Some points for improvements are identified, such as the ocean carbon cycle.
Sjoukje Y. Philip, Sarah F. Kew, Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, Faron S. Anslow, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Robert Vautard, Dim Coumou, Kristie L. Ebi, Julie Arrighi, Roop Singh, Maarten van Aalst, Carolina Pereira Marghidan, Michael Wehner, Wenchang Yang, Sihan Li, Dominik L. Schumacher, Mathias Hauser, Rémy Bonnet, Linh N. Luu, Flavio Lehner, Nathan Gillett, Jordis S. Tradowsky, Gabriel A. Vecchi, Chris Rodell, Roland B. Stull, Rosie Howard, and Friederike E. L. Otto
Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 1689–1713, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1689-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1689-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
In June 2021, the Pacific Northwest of the US and Canada saw record temperatures far exceeding those previously observed. This attribution study found such a severe heat wave would have been virtually impossible without human-induced climate change. Assuming no nonlinear interactions, such events have become at least 150 times more common, are about 2 °C hotter and will become even more common as warming continues. Therefore, adaptation and mitigation are urgently needed to prepare society.
Ryan S. Padrón, Lukas Gudmundsson, Laibao Liu, Vincent Humphrey, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Biogeosciences, 19, 5435–5448, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-19-5435-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-19-5435-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
The answer to how much carbon land ecosystems are projected to remove from the atmosphere until 2100 is different for each Earth system model. We find that differences across models are primarily explained by the annual land carbon sink dependence on temperature and soil moisture, followed by the dependence on CO2 air concentration, and by average climate conditions. Our insights on why each model projects a relatively high or low land carbon sink can help to reduce the underlying uncertainty.
Steven J. De Hertog, Felix Havermann, Inne Vanderkelen, Suqi Guo, Fei Luo, Iris Manola, Dim Coumou, Edouard L. Davin, Gregory Duveiller, Quentin Lejeune, Julia Pongratz, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Sonia I. Seneviratne, and Wim Thiery
Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 1305–1350, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1305-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1305-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
Land cover and land management changes are important strategies for future land-based mitigation. We investigate the climate effects of cropland expansion, afforestation, irrigation, and wood harvesting using three Earth system models. Results show that these have important implications for surface temperature where the land cover and/or management change occurs and in remote areas. Idealized afforestation causes global warming, which might offset the cooling effect from enhanced carbon uptake.
Kathrin Wehrli, Fei Luo, Mathias Hauser, Hideo Shiogama, Daisuke Tokuda, Hyungjun Kim, Dim Coumou, Wilhelm May, Philippe Le Sager, Frank Selten, Olivia Martius, Robert Vautard, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 1167–1196, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1167-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1167-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
The ExtremeX experiment was designed to unravel the contribution of processes leading to the occurrence of recent weather and climate extremes. Global climate simulations are carried out with three models. The results show that in constrained experiments, temperature anomalies during heatwaves are well represented, although climatological model biases remain. Further, a substantial contribution of both atmospheric circulation and soil moisture to heat extremes is identified.
Fei Luo, Frank Selten, Kathrin Wehrli, Kai Kornhuber, Philippe Le Sager, Wilhelm May, Thomas Reerink, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Hideo Shiogama, Daisuke Tokuda, Hyungjun Kim, and Dim Coumou
Weather Clim. Dynam., 3, 905–935, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-3-905-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-3-905-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
Recent studies have identified the weather systems in observational data, where wave patterns with high-magnitude values that circle around the whole globe in either wavenumber 5 or wavenumber 7 are responsible for the extreme events. In conclusion, we find that the climate models are able to reproduce the large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns as well as their associated surface variables such as temperature, precipitation, and sea level pressure.
Verena Bessenbacher, Sonia Isabelle Seneviratne, and Lukas Gudmundsson
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 4569–4596, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-4569-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-4569-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
Earth observations have many missing values. They are often filled using information from spatial and temporal contexts that mostly ignore information from related observed variables. We propose the gap-filling method CLIMFILL that additionally uses information from related variables. We test CLIMFILL using gap-free reanalysis data of variables related to soil–moisture climate interactions. CLIMFILL creates estimates for the missing values that recover the original dependence structure.
Shruti Nath, Quentin Lejeune, Lea Beusch, Sonia I. Seneviratne, and Carl-Friedrich Schleussner
Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 851–877, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-851-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-851-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
Uncertainty within climate model projections on inter-annual timescales is largely affected by natural climate variability. Emulators are valuable tools for approximating climate model runs, allowing for easy exploration of such uncertainty spaces. This study takes a first step at building a spatially resolved, monthly temperature emulator that takes local yearly temperatures as the sole input, thus providing monthly temperature distributions which are of critical value to impact assessments.
Irina Melnikova, Olivier Boucher, Patricia Cadule, Katsumasa Tanaka, Thomas Gasser, Tomohiro Hajima, Yann Quilcaille, Hideo Shiogama, Roland Séférian, Kaoru Tachiiri, Nicolas Vuichard, Tokuta Yokohata, and Philippe Ciais
Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 779–794, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-779-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-779-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
The deployment of bioenergy crops for capturing carbon from the atmosphere facilitates global warming mitigation via generating negative CO2 emissions. Here, we explored the consequences of large-scale energy crops deployment on the land carbon cycle. The land-use change for energy crops leads to carbon emissions and loss of future potential increase in carbon uptake by natural ecosystems. This impact should be taken into account by the modeling teams and accounted for in mitigation policies.
Ronny Meier, Edouard L. Davin, Gordon B. Bonan, David M. Lawrence, Xiaolong Hu, Gregory Duveiller, Catherine Prigent, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 2365–2393, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2365-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2365-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
We revise the roughness of the land surface in the CESM climate model. Guided by observational data, we increase the surface roughness of forests and decrease that of bare soil, snow, ice, and crops. These modifications alter simulated temperatures and wind speeds at and above the land surface considerably, in particular over desert regions. The revised model represents the diurnal variability of the land surface temperature better compared to satellite observations over most regions.
Lea Beusch, Zebedee Nicholls, Lukas Gudmundsson, Mathias Hauser, Malte Meinshausen, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 2085–2103, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2085-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2085-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
We introduce the first chain of computationally efficient Earth system model (ESM) emulators to translate user-defined greenhouse gas emission pathways into regional temperature change time series accounting for all major sources of climate change projection uncertainty. By combining the global mean emulator MAGICC with the spatially resolved emulator MESMER, we can derive ESM-specific and constrained probabilistic emulations to rapidly provide targeted climate information at the local scale.
Heye Reemt Bogena, Martin Schrön, Jannis Jakobi, Patrizia Ney, Steffen Zacharias, Mie Andreasen, Roland Baatz, David Boorman, Mustafa Berk Duygu, Miguel Angel Eguibar-Galán, Benjamin Fersch, Till Franke, Josie Geris, María González Sanchis, Yann Kerr, Tobias Korf, Zalalem Mengistu, Arnaud Mialon, Paolo Nasta, Jerzy Nitychoruk, Vassilios Pisinaras, Daniel Rasche, Rafael Rosolem, Hami Said, Paul Schattan, Marek Zreda, Stefan Achleitner, Eduardo Albentosa-Hernández, Zuhal Akyürek, Theresa Blume, Antonio del Campo, Davide Canone, Katya Dimitrova-Petrova, John G. Evans, Stefano Ferraris, Félix Frances, Davide Gisolo, Andreas Güntner, Frank Herrmann, Joost Iwema, Karsten H. Jensen, Harald Kunstmann, Antonio Lidón, Majken Caroline Looms, Sascha Oswald, Andreas Panagopoulos, Amol Patil, Daniel Power, Corinna Rebmann, Nunzio Romano, Lena Scheiffele, Sonia Seneviratne, Georg Weltin, and Harry Vereecken
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 14, 1125–1151, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1125-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1125-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
Monitoring of increasingly frequent droughts is a prerequisite for climate adaptation strategies. This data paper presents long-term soil moisture measurements recorded by 66 cosmic-ray neutron sensors (CRNS) operated by 24 institutions and distributed across major climate zones in Europe. Data processing followed harmonized protocols and state-of-the-art methods to generate consistent and comparable soil moisture products and to facilitate continental-scale analysis of hydrological extremes.
Aine M. Gormley-Gallagher, Sebastian Sterl, Annette L. Hirsch, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Edouard L. Davin, and Wim Thiery
Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 419–438, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-419-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-419-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
Our results show that agricultural management can impact the local climate and highlight the need to evaluate land management in climate models. We use regression analysis on climate simulations and observations to assess irrigation and conservation agriculture impacts on warming trends. This allowed us to distinguish between the effects of land management and large-scale climate forcings such as rising CO2 concentrations and thus gain insight into the impacts under different climate regimes.
Quentin Lejeune, Edouard L. Davin, Grégory Duveiller, Bas Crezee, Ronny Meier, Alessandro Cescatti, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Earth Syst. Dynam., 11, 1209–1232, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-11-1209-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-11-1209-2020, 2020
Short summary
Short summary
Trees are darker than crops or grasses; hence, they absorb more solar radiation. Therefore, land cover changes modify the fraction of solar radiation reflected by the land surface (its albedo), with consequences for the climate. We apply a new statistical method to simulations conducted with 15 recent climate models and find that albedo variations due to land cover changes since 1860 have led to a decrease in the net amount of energy entering the atmosphere by −0.09 W m2 on average.
Maialen Iturbide, José M. Gutiérrez, Lincoln M. Alves, Joaquín Bedia, Ruth Cerezo-Mota, Ezequiel Cimadevilla, Antonio S. Cofiño, Alejandro Di Luca, Sergio Henrique Faria, Irina V. Gorodetskaya, Mathias Hauser, Sixto Herrera, Kevin Hennessy, Helene T. Hewitt, Richard G. Jones, Svitlana Krakovska, Rodrigo Manzanas, Daniel Martínez-Castro, Gemma T. Narisma, Intan S. Nurhati, Izidine Pinto, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Bart van den Hurk, and Carolina S. Vera
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 2959–2970, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2959-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2959-2020, 2020
Short summary
Short summary
We present an update of the IPCC WGI reference regions used in AR5 for the synthesis of climate change information. This revision was guided by the basic principles of climatic consistency and model representativeness (in particular for the new CMIP6 simulations). We also present a new dataset of monthly CMIP5 and CMIP6 spatially aggregated information using the new reference regions and describe a worked example of how to use this dataset to inform regional climate change studies.
Kathrin Wehrli, Mathias Hauser, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Earth Syst. Dynam., 11, 855–873, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-11-855-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-11-855-2020, 2020
Short summary
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.
Karina von Schuckmann, Lijing Cheng, Matthew D. Palmer, James Hansen, Caterina Tassone, Valentin Aich, Susheel Adusumilli, Hugo Beltrami, Tim Boyer, Francisco José Cuesta-Valero, Damien Desbruyères, Catia Domingues, Almudena García-García, Pierre Gentine, John Gilson, Maximilian Gorfer, Leopold Haimberger, Masayoshi Ishii, Gregory C. Johnson, Rachel Killick, Brian A. King, Gottfried Kirchengast, Nicolas Kolodziejczyk, John Lyman, Ben Marzeion, Michael Mayer, Maeva Monier, Didier Paolo Monselesan, Sarah Purkey, Dean Roemmich, Axel Schweiger, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Andrew Shepherd, Donald A. Slater, Andrea K. Steiner, Fiammetta Straneo, Mary-Louise Timmermans, and Susan E. Wijffels
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 2013–2041, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2013-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2013-2020, 2020
Short summary
Short summary
Understanding how much and where the heat is distributed in the Earth system is fundamental to understanding how this affects warming oceans, atmosphere and land, rising temperatures and sea level, and loss of grounded and floating ice, which are fundamental concerns for society. This study is a Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) concerted international effort to obtain the Earth heat inventory over the period 1960–2018.
Hong Xuan Do, Fang Zhao, Seth Westra, Michael Leonard, Lukas Gudmundsson, Julien Eric Stanislas Boulange, Jinfeng Chang, Philippe Ciais, Dieter Gerten, Simon N. Gosling, Hannes Müller Schmied, Tobias Stacke, Camelia-Eliza Telteu, and Yoshihide Wada
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 24, 1543–1564, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-1543-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-1543-2020, 2020
Short summary
Short summary
We presented a global comparison between observed and simulated trends in a flood index over the 1971–2005 period using the Global Streamflow Indices and Metadata archive and six global hydrological models available through The Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project. Streamflow simulations over 2006–2099 period robustly project high flood hazard in several regions. These high-flood-risk areas, however, are under-sampled by the current global streamflow databases.
Ryan S. Padrón, Lukas Gudmundsson, Dominik Michel, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 24, 793–807, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-793-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-793-2020, 2020
Short summary
Short summary
We focus on the net exchange of water between land and air via evapotranspiration and dew during the night. We provide, for the first time, an overview of the magnitude and variability of this flux across the globe from observations and climate models. Nocturnal water loss from land is 7 % of total evapotranspiration on average and can be greater than 15 % locally. Our results highlight the relevance of this often overlooked flux, with implications for water resources and climate studies.
Lea Beusch, Lukas Gudmundsson, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Earth Syst. Dynam., 11, 139–159, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-11-139-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-11-139-2020, 2020
Short summary
Short summary
Earth system models (ESMs) are invaluable to study the climate system but expensive to run. Here, we present a statistical tool which emulates ESMs at a negligible computational cost by creating stochastic realizations of yearly land temperature field time series. Thereby, 40 ESMs are considered, and for each ESM, a single simulation is required to train the tool. The resulting ESM-specific realizations closely resemble ESM simulations not employed during training at point to regional scales.
Gionata Ghiggi, Vincent Humphrey, Sonia I. Seneviratne, and Lukas Gudmundsson
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 11, 1655–1674, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-11-1655-2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-11-1655-2019, 2019
Short summary
Short summary
Freshwater resources are of high societal relevance and understanding their past variability is vital to water management in the context of current and future climatic change. This study introduces GRUN: the first global gridded monthly reconstruction of runoff covering the period from 1902 to 2014. The dataset agrees on average much better with the streamflow observations than an ensemble of 13 state-of-the-art global hydrological models and will foster the understanding of freshwater dynamics.
Inne Vanderkelen, Jakob Zschleischler, Lukas Gudmundsson, Klaus Keuler, Francois Rineau, Natalie Beenaerts, Jaco Vangronsveld, and Wim Thiery
Biogeosciences Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-2019-267, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-2019-267, 2019
Manuscript not accepted for further review
Vincent Humphrey and Lukas Gudmundsson
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 11, 1153–1170, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-11-1153-2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-11-1153-2019, 2019
Short summary
Short summary
Because changes in freshwater availability can impact many natural ecosystems and human activities, it is crucial to better understand long-term changes in the water cycle. This dataset is a reconstruction of past changes in land water storage over the last century, obtained by combining satellite observations with historical weather data. It can be used to investigate both regional changes in freshwater availability or drought frequency and long-term changes in the global water cycle.
Hong Xuan Do, Lukas Gudmundsson, Michael Leonard, and Seth Westra
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 10, 765–785, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-10-765-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-10-765-2018, 2018
Short summary
Short summary
The production of 30 959 daily streamflow time series in the Global Streamflow and Metadata Archive (GSIM) project is presented. The paper also describes the development of three metadata products that are freely available. Having collated an unprecedented number of stations and associated metadata, GSIM can be used to advance large-scale hydrological research and improve understanding of the global water cycle.
Lukas Gudmundsson, Hong Xuan Do, Michael Leonard, and Seth Westra
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 10, 787–804, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-10-787-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-10-787-2018, 2018
Short summary
Short summary
Time-series indices characterizing streamflow at annual, seasonal and monthly resolution at more than 30 000 stations around the world are presented. The data belong to the Global Streamflow and Metadata Archive (GSIM) and allow for an assessment of water balance components, hydrological extremes and the seasonality of water availability. The quality of the data is tested using automated methods to aid potential users to gauge the suitability of the data for specific applications.
Peter Greve, Lukas Gudmundsson, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Earth Syst. Dynam., 9, 227–240, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-9-227-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-9-227-2018, 2018
Short summary
Short summary
Assessing projected hydroclimatological changes is crucial, but associated with large uncertainties. We statistically assess here the response of precipitation and water availability to global temperature change, enabling us to estimate the significance of drying/wetting tendencies under anthropogenic climate change. We further show that opting for a 1.5 K warming target just slightly influences the mean response but could substantially reduce the risk of experiencing extreme changes.
Jakob Zscheischler, Rene Orth, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Biogeosciences, 14, 3309–3320, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-14-3309-2017, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-14-3309-2017, 2017
Short summary
Short summary
We use newly established methods to compute bivariate return periods of temperature and precipitation and relate those to crop yield variability in Europe. Most often, crop yields are lower when it is hot and dry and higher when it is cold and wet. The variability in crop yields along a specific climate gradient can be captured well by return periods aligned with these gradients. This study provides new possibilities for investigating the relationship between crop yield variability and climate.
Martin Hirschi, Dominik Michel, Irene Lehner, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 1809–1825, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-1809-2017, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-1809-2017, 2017
Short summary
Short summary
We compare lysimeter and eddy covariance (EC) flux measurements of evapotranspiration at a research catchment in Switzerland. The measurements are compared on various timescales, and with respect to a 40-year long-term lysimeter time series. Overall, the lysimeter and EC measurements agree well, especially on the annual timescale. Furthermore, we identify that lack of reliable EC data during/after rainfall events significantly contributes to an underestimation of EC evapotranspiration.
Thomas Gasser, Philippe Ciais, Olivier Boucher, Yann Quilcaille, Maxime Tortora, Laurent Bopp, and Didier Hauglustaine
Geosci. Model Dev., 10, 271–319, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-271-2017, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-271-2017, 2017
Short summary
Short summary
Simple models of the Earth system are useful, especially because of their high computing efficiency. This work describes the OSCAR model: a new simple Earth system model calibrated on state-of-the-art complex models. It will add to the pool of the few simple models currently used by the community, and it will therefore improve the robustness of future studies. Its source code is available upon request.
David M. Lawrence, George C. Hurtt, Almut Arneth, Victor Brovkin, Kate V. Calvin, Andrew D. Jones, Chris D. Jones, Peter J. Lawrence, Nathalie de Noblet-Ducoudré, Julia Pongratz, Sonia I. Seneviratne, and Elena Shevliakova
Geosci. Model Dev., 9, 2973–2998, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-2973-2016, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-2973-2016, 2016
Short summary
Short summary
Human land-use activities have resulted in large changes to the Earth's surface, with resulting implications for climate. In the future, land-use activities are likely to expand and intensify further to meet growing demands for food, fiber, and energy. The goal of LUMIP is to take the next steps in land-use change science, and enable, coordinate, and ultimately address the most important land-use science questions in more depth and sophistication than possible in a multi-model context to date.
Lukas Gudmundsson and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 8, 279–295, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-8-279-2016, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-8-279-2016, 2016
Short summary
Short summary
Despite the scientific and societal relevance of freshwater, there are to date no observation-based pan-European runoff estimates available. Here we employ state-of-the-art techniques to estimate monthly runoff rates in Europe. The new data product is based on an unprecedented collection of river flow observations which are combined with atmospheric variables using machine learning. Potential applications of the presented product include climatological assessments and drought monitoring.
Peter Greve, Lukas Gudmundsson, Boris Orlowsky, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 20, 2195–2205, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-2195-2016, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-2195-2016, 2016
Short summary
Short summary
The widely used Budyko framework is by definition limited to steady-state conditions. In this study we analytically derive a new, two-parameter formulation of the Budyko framework that represents conditions under which evapotranspiration exceeds precipitation. This is technically achieved by rotating the water supply limit within the Budyko space. The new formulation is shown to be capable to represent first-order seasonal dynamics within the hydroclimatological system.
D. Michel, C. Jiménez, D. G. Miralles, M. Jung, M. Hirschi, A. Ershadi, B. Martens, M. F. McCabe, J. B. Fisher, Q. Mu, S. I. Seneviratne, E. F. Wood, and D. Fernández-Prieto
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 20, 803–822, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-803-2016, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-803-2016, 2016
Short summary
Short summary
In this study a common reference input data set from satellite and in situ data is used to run four established evapotranspiration (ET) algorithms using sub-daily and daily input on a tower scale as a testbed for a global ET product. The PT-JPL model and GLEAM provide the best performance for satellite and in situ forcing as well as for the different temporal resolutions. PM-MOD and SEBS perform less well: the PM-MOD model generally underestimates, while SEBS generally overestimates ET.
L. Gudmundsson and S. I. Seneviratne
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 19, 2859–2879, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-2859-2015, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-2859-2015, 2015
Short summary
Short summary
Water storages and fluxes on land are key variables in the Earth system. To provide context for local investigations and to understand phenomena that emerge at large spatial scales, information on continental freshwater dynamics is needed. This paper presents a methodology to estimate continental-scale runoff on a 0.5° spatial grid, which combines the advantages of in situ observations with the power of machine learning regression. The resulting runoff estimates compare well with observations.
L. Gudmundsson and S. I. Seneviratne
Proc. IAHS, 369, 75–79, https://doi.org/10.5194/piahs-369-75-2015, https://doi.org/10.5194/piahs-369-75-2015, 2015
Short summary
Short summary
Recent climate projections suggest changes in European drought frequency, indicating increased drought risk in the south and less droughts in the north. Here we show that a similar change pattern can be identified in the observed record. The results raise the question whether observed changes in European drought frequency are a consequence of anthropogenic climate change.
B. P. Guillod, B. Orlowsky, D. Miralles, A. J. Teuling, P. D. Blanken, N. Buchmann, P. Ciais, M. Ek, K. L. Findell, P. Gentine, B. R. Lintner, R. L. Scott, B. Van den Hurk, and S. I. Seneviratne
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 14, 8343–8367, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-8343-2014, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-8343-2014, 2014
S. J. Sutanto, B. van den Hurk, P. A. Dirmeyer, S. I. Seneviratne, T. Röckmann, K. E. Trenberth, E. M. Blyth, J. Wenninger, and G. Hoffmann
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 18, 2815–2827, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-18-2815-2014, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-18-2815-2014, 2014
F. Aemisegger, S. Pfahl, H. Sodemann, I. Lehner, S. I. Seneviratne, and H. Wernli
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 14, 4029–4054, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-4029-2014, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-4029-2014, 2014
L. Gudmundsson and S. I. Seneviratne
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/hessd-10-13191-2013, https://doi.org/10.5194/hessd-10-13191-2013, 2013
Manuscript not accepted for further review
R. Orth and S. I. Seneviratne
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 17, 3895–3911, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-17-3895-2013, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-17-3895-2013, 2013
B. Mueller, M. Hirschi, C. Jimenez, P. Ciais, P. A. Dirmeyer, A. J. Dolman, J. B. Fisher, M. Jung, F. Ludwig, F. Maignan, D. G. Miralles, M. F. McCabe, M. Reichstein, J. Sheffield, K. Wang, E. F. Wood, Y. Zhang, and S. I. Seneviratne
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 17, 3707–3720, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-17-3707-2013, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-17-3707-2013, 2013
B. Orlowsky and S. I. Seneviratne
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 17, 1765–1781, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-17-1765-2013, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-17-1765-2013, 2013
Related subject area
Topics: Climate change | Interactions: Other interactions | Methods: Earth system and climate modeling
Future changes in compound explosive cyclones and atmospheric rivers in the North Atlantic
Storylines of summer Arctic climate change constrained by Barents–Kara seas and Arctic tropospheric warming for climate risk assessment
Testing the assumptions in emergent constraints: why does the “emergent constraint on equilibrium climate sensitivity from global temperature variability” work for CMIP5 and not CMIP6?
Climate tipping point interactions and cascades: a review
Understanding pattern scaling errors across a range of emissions pathways
Role of mean and variability change in changes in European annual and seasonal extreme precipitation events
Modelling the effect of aerosol and greenhouse gas forcing on the South Asian and East Asian monsoons with an intermediate-complexity climate model
Ferran Lopez-Marti, Mireia Ginesta, Davide Faranda, Anna Rutgersson, Pascal Yiou, Lichuan Wu, and Gabriele Messori
Earth Syst. Dynam., 16, 169–187, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-169-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-169-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Explosive cyclones and atmospheric rivers are two main drivers of extreme weather in Europe. In this study, we investigate their joint changes in future climates over the North Atlantic. Our results show that both the concurrence of these events and the intensity of atmospheric rivers increase by the end of the century across different future scenarios. Furthermore, explosive cyclones associated with atmospheric rivers last longer and are deeper than those without atmospheric rivers.
Xavier J. Levine, Ryan S. Williams, Gareth Marshall, Andrew Orr, Lise Seland Graff, Dörthe Handorf, Alexey Karpechko, Raphael Köhler, René R. Wijngaard, Nadine Johnston, Hanna Lee, Lars Nieradzik, and Priscilla A. Mooney
Earth Syst. Dynam., 15, 1161–1177, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-1161-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-1161-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
While the most recent climate projections agree that the Arctic is warming, differences remain in how much and in other climate variables such as precipitation. This presents a challenge for stakeholders who need to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies. We tackle this problem by using the storyline approach to generate four plausible and actionable realisations of end-of-century climate change for the Arctic, spanning its most likely range of variability.
Mark S. Williamson, Peter M. Cox, Chris Huntingford, and Femke J. M. M. Nijsse
Earth Syst. Dynam., 15, 829–852, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-829-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-829-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Emergent constraints on equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) have generally got statistically weaker in the latest set of state-of-the-art climate models (CMIP6) compared to past sets (CMIP5). We look at why this weakening happened for one particular study (Cox et al, 2018) and attribute it to an assumption made in the theory that when corrected for restores there is a stronger relationship between predictor and ECS.
Nico Wunderling, Anna S. von der Heydt, Yevgeny Aksenov, Stephen Barker, Robbin Bastiaansen, Victor Brovkin, Maura Brunetti, Victor Couplet, Thomas Kleinen, Caroline H. Lear, Johannes Lohmann, Rosa Maria Roman-Cuesta, Sacha Sinet, Didier Swingedouw, Ricarda Winkelmann, Pallavi Anand, Jonathan Barichivich, Sebastian Bathiany, Mara Baudena, John T. Bruun, Cristiano M. Chiessi, Helen K. Coxall, David Docquier, Jonathan F. Donges, Swinda K. J. Falkena, Ann Kristin Klose, David Obura, Juan Rocha, Stefanie Rynders, Norman Julius Steinert, and Matteo Willeit
Earth Syst. Dynam., 15, 41–74, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-41-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-41-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
This paper maps out the state-of-the-art literature on interactions between tipping elements relevant for current global warming pathways. We find indications that many of the interactions between tipping elements are destabilizing. This means that tipping cascades cannot be ruled out on centennial to millennial timescales at global warming levels between 1.5 and 2.0 °C or on shorter timescales if global warming surpasses 2.0 °C.
Christopher D. Wells, Lawrence S. Jackson, Amanda C. Maycock, and Piers M. Forster
Earth Syst. Dynam., 14, 817–834, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-817-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-817-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
There are many possibilities for future emissions, with different impacts in different places. Complex models can study these impacts but take a long time to run, even on powerful computers. Simple methods can be used to reduce this time by estimating the complex model output, but these are not perfect. This study looks at the accuracy of one of these techniques, showing that there are limitations to its use, especially for low-emission future scenarios.
Raul R. Wood
Earth Syst. Dynam., 14, 797–816, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-797-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-797-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
The change in extreme-event occurrence is influenced by both a shift in the mean and a change in variability. How large the individual contributions are remains largely unknown. Large-ensemble climate simulations and probability risk ratio are used to partition the change in extreme precipitation events into contributions from a change in the mean and variability. The results reveal that the change in variability can be equally as important as or even more important than the mean change.
Lucy G. Recchia and Valerio Lucarini
Earth Syst. Dynam., 14, 697–722, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-697-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-697-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
Simulations are performed with an intermediate-complexity climate model, PLASIM, to assess the future response of monsoons to changing concentrations of aerosols and greenhouse gases. The aerosol loading is applied to India, Southeast Asia, and eastern China, both concurrently and independently, to assess linearity. The primary effect of increased aerosol loading is a decrease in summer precipitation in the vicinity of the applied forcing, although the regional response varies significantly.
Cited articles
Abatzoglou, J. T., Williams, A. P., Boschetti, L., Zubkova, M., and Kolden, C. A.: Global patterns of interannual climate–fire relationships, Glob. Change Biol., 24, 5164–5175, https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14405, 2018.
Abatzoglou, J. T., Williams, A. P., and Barbero, R.: Global Emergence of Anthropogenic Climate Change in Fire Weather Indices, Geophys. Res. Lett., 46, 326–336, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL080959, 2019.
Alexeeff, S. E., Nychka, D., Sain, S. R., and Tebaldi, C.: Emulating mean patterns and variability of temperature across and within scenarios in anthropogenic climate change experiments, Climatic Change, 146, 319–333, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-016-1809-8, 2018.
Allan, R. P., Barlow, M., Byrne, M. P., Cherchi, A., Douville, H., Fowler, H. J., Gan, T. Y., Pendergrass, A. G., Rosenfeld, D., Swann, A. L. S., Wilcox, L. J., and Zolina, O.: Advances in understanding large-scale responses of the water cycle to climate change, Ann. NY Acad. Sci., 1472, 49–75, https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.14337, 2020.
Andela, N., Morton, D. C., Giglio, L., Chen, Y., van der Werf, G. R., Kasibhatla, P. S., DeFries, R. S., Collatz, G. J., Hantson, S., Kloster, S., Bachelet, D., Forrest, M., Lasslop, G., Li, F., Mangeon, S., Melton, J. R., Yue, C., and Randerson, J. T.: A human-driven decline in global burned area, Science, 356, 1356–1362, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aal4108, 2017.
Anderson, K. and Peters, G.: The trouble with negative emissions, Science, 354, 182–183, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aah4567, 2016.
Angus, J. E.: The probability integral transform and related results, SIAM Rev., 36, 652–654, 1994.
Bedia, J., Herrera, S., Gutiérrez, J. M., Benali, A., Brands, S., Mota, B., and Moreno, J. M.: Global patterns in the sensitivity of burned area to fire-weather: Implications for climate change, Agr. Forest Meteorol., 214–215, 369–379, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2015.09.002, 2015.
Beusch, L., Gudmundsson, L., and Seneviratne, S. I.: Emulating Earth system model temperatures with MESMER: from global mean temperature trajectories to grid-point-level realizations on land, Earth Syst. Dynam., 11, 139–159, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-11-139-2020, 2020a.
Beusch, L., Gudmundsson, L., and Seneviratne, S. I.: Crossbreeding CMIP6 Earth System Models With an Emulator for Regionally Optimized Land Temperature Projections, Geophys. Res. Lett., 47, e2019GL086812, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL086812, 2020b.
Beusch, L., Nauels, A., Gudmundsson, L., Gütschow, J., Schleussner, C.-F., and Seneviratne, S. I.: Responsibility of major emitters for country-level warming and extreme hot years, Commun. Earth Environ., 3, 7, https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-021-00320-6, 2022a.
Beusch, L., Nicholls, Z., Gudmundsson, L., Hauser, M., Meinshausen, M., and Seneviratne, S. I.: From emission scenarios to spatially resolved projections with a chain of computationally efficient emulators: coupling of MAGICC (v7.5.1) and MESMER (v0.8.3), Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 2085–2103, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2085-2022, 2022b.
Brunner, L., Hauser, M., Lorenz, R., and Beyerle, U.: The ETH Zurich CMIP6 next generation archive: technical documentation (v1.0-final), Zenodo, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3734128, 2020.
Caretta, M. A., Mukherji, A., Arfanuzzaman, M., Betts, R. A., Gelfan, A., Hirabayashi, Y., Lissner, T. K., Liu, J., Lopez Gunn, E., Morgan, R., Mwanga, S., and Supratid, S.: Water, in: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by: Pörtner, H.-O., Roberts, D. C., Tignor, M., Poloczanska, E. S., Mintenbeck, K., Alegriìa, A., Craig, M., Langsdorf, S., Löschke, S., Möller, V., Okem, A., and Rama, B. E., Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009325844.006, 2022.
Carrassi, A., Bocquet, M., Bertino, L., and Evensen, G.: Data assimilation in the geosciences: An overview of methods, issues, and perspectives, WIREs Climate Change, 9, e535, https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.535, 2018.
Coles, S.: An introduction to statistical modeling of extreme values, Springer, London, New York, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3675-0, 2001.
Cook, B. I., Mankin, J. S., Marvel, K., Williams, A. P., Smerdon, J. E., and Anchukaitis, K. J.: Twenty-First Century Drought Projections in the CMIP6 Forcing Scenarios, Earth's Future, 8, e2019EF001461, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EF001461, 2020.
Cressie, N. and Wikle, C. K.: Statistics for spatio-temporal data, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey, USA, 624 pp., ISBN 978-0-471-69274-4, 2011.
Douville, H., Raghavan, K., Renwick, J., Allan, R. P., Arias, P. A., Barlow, M., Cerezo-Mota, R., Cherchi, A., Gan, T. Y., Gergis, J., Jiang, D., Khan, A., Pokam Mba, W., Rosenfeld, D., Tierney, J., and Zolina, O.: Water Cycle Changes, in: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by: Masson-Delmotte, V., Zhai, P., Pirani, A., Connors, S. L., Péan, C., Berger, S., Caud, N., Chen, Y., Goldfarb, L., Gomis, M. I., Huang, M., Leitzell, K., Lonnoy, E., Matthews, J. B. R., Maycock, T. K., Waterfield, T., Yelekçi, O., Yu, R., and Zhou, B. E., Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157896.010, 2021.
Eyring, V., Bony, S., Meehl, G. A., Senior, C. A., Stevens, B., Stouffer, R. J., and Taylor, K. E.: Overview of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) experimental design and organization, Geosci. Model Dev., 9, 1937–1958, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-1937-2016, 2016.
Friederichs, P. and Thorarinsdottir, T. L.: Forecast verification for extreme value distributions with an application to probabilistic peak wind prediction, Environmetrics, 23, 579–594, https://doi.org/10.1002/env.2176, 2012.
Fuss, S., Canadell, J. G., Peters, G. P., Tavoni, M., Andrew, R. M., Ciais, P., Jackson, R. B., Jones, C. D., Kraxner, F., Nakicenovic, N., Le Quéré, C., Raupach, M. R., Sharifi, A., Smith, P., and Yamagata, Y.: COMMENTARY: Betting on negative emissions, Nat. Clim. Change, 4, 850–853, 2014.
Gaspari, G. and Cohn, S. E.: Construction of correlation functions in two and three dimensions, Q. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc., 125, 723–757, https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.49712555417, 1999.
Gneiting, T., Balabdaoui, F., and Raftery, A. E.: Probabilistic forecasts, calibration and sharpness, J. Roy. Stat. Soc. B, 69, 243–268, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9868.2007.00587.x, 2007.
Greve, P., Gudmundsson, L., and Seneviratne, S. I.: Regional scaling of annual mean precipitation and water availability with global temperature change, Earth Syst. Dynam., 9, 227–240, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-9-227-2018, 2018.
Grillakis, M., Voulgarakis, A., Rovithakis, A., Seiradakis, K. D., Koutroulis, A., Field, R. D., Kasoar, M., Papadopoulos, A., and Lazaridis, M.: Climate drivers of global wildfire burned area, Environ. Res. Lett., 17, 045021, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac5fa1, 2022.
Gudmundsson, L., Bremnes, J. B., Haugen, J. E., and Engen-Skaugen, T.: Technical Note: Downscaling RCM precipitation to the station scale using statistical transformations – a comparison of methods, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 16, 3383–3390, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-16-3383-2012, 2012.
Hasegawa, T., Sakurai, G., Fujimori, S., Takahashi, K., Hijioka, Y., and Masui, T.: Extreme climate events increase risk of global food insecurity and adaptation needs, Nat. Food, 2, 587–595, https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00335-4, 2021.
Herger, N., Sanderson, B. M., and Knutti, R.: Improved pattern scaling approaches for the use in climate impact studies, Geophys. Res. Lett., 42, 3486–3494, https://doi.org/10.1002/2015GL063569, 2015.
Hersbach, H.: Decomposition of the Continuous Ranked Probability Score for Ensemble Prediction Systems, Weather Forecast., 15, 559–570, https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0434(2000)015<0559:DOTCRP>2.0.CO;2, 2000.
Hoegh-Guldberg, O., Jacob, D., Taylor, M., Bindi, M., Brown, S., Camilloni, I., Diedhiou, A., Djalante, R., Ebi, K., Engelbrecht, F., Guiot, J., Hijioka, Y., Mehrotra, S., Payne, A., Seneviratne, S. I., Thomas, A., Warren, R., and Zhou, G.: Impacts of 1.5∘ C global warming on natural and human systems, in: Global warming of 1.5∘e C, An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5∘ C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty, edited by: Masson-Delmotte, V., Zhai, P., Pörtner, H. O., Roberts, D., Skea, J., Shukla, P. R., Pirani, A., Moufouma-Okia, W., Péan, C., Pidcock, R., Connors, S., Matthews, J. B. R., Chen, Y., Zhou, X., Gomis, M. I., Lonnoy, E., Maycock, T., Tignor, M., and Waterfield, T., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA, 175–312, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157940.005, 2018.
Humphrey, V. and Gudmundsson, L.: GRACE-REC: a reconstruction of climate-driven water storage changes over the last century, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 11, 1153–1170, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-11-1153-2019, 2019.
IPCC: Field, C. B., Barros, V. R., Dokken, D. J., Mach, K. J., Mastrandrea, M. D., Bilir, T. E., Chatterjee, M., Ebi, K. L., Estrada, Y. O., Genova, R. C., Girma, B., Kissel, E. S., Levy, A. N., MacCracken, S., Mastrandrea, P. R., and White, L. L. (Eds.): Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1-107-05807-1, 2014.
IPCC: Global warming of 1.5C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157940, 2018.
Iturbide, M., Gutiérrez, J. M., Alves, L. M., Bedia, J., Cerezo-Mota, R., Cimadevilla, E., Cofiño, A. S., Di Luca, A., Faria, S. H., Gorodetskaya, I. V., Hauser, M., Herrera, S., Hennessy, K., Hewitt, H. T., Jones, R. G., Krakovska, S., Manzanas, R., Martínez-Castro, D., Narisma, G. T., Nurhati, I. S., Pinto, I., Seneviratne, S. I., van den Hurk, B., and Vera, C. S.: An update of IPCC climate reference regions for subcontinental analysis of climate model data: definition and aggregated datasets, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 2959–2970, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2959-2020, 2020.
Jain, P., Castellanos-Acuna, D., Coogan, S. C. P., Abatzoglou, J. T., and Flannigan, M. D.: Observed increases in extreme fire weather driven by atmospheric humidity and temperature, Nat. Clim. Change, 12, 63–70, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01224-1, 2022.
Jolliffe, I. T. and Stephenson, D. B.: Forecast verification: a practitioner's guide in atmospheric science, John Wiley & Sons, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119960003, 2012.
Jolly, W. M., Cochrane, M. A., Freeborn, P. H., Holden, Z. A., Brown, T. J., Williamson, G. J., and Bowman, D. M. J. S.: Climate-induced variations in global wildfire danger from 1979 to 2013, Nat. Commun., 6, 7537, https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8537, 2015.
Jones, M. W., Abatzoglou, J. T., Veraverbeke, S., Andela, N., Lasslop, G., Forkel, M., Smith, A. J. P., Burton, C., Betts, R. A., van der Werf, G. R., Sitch, S., Canadell, J. G., Santín, C., Kolden, C., Doerr, S. H., and Le Quéré, C.: Global and Regional Trends and Drivers of Fire Under Climate Change, Rev. Geophys., 60, e2020RG000726, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020RG000726, 2022.
Jones, P. W.: First- and Second-Order Conservative Remapping Schemes for Grids in Spherical Coordinates, Mon. Weather Rev., 127, 2204–2210, https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0493(1999)127<2204:FASOCR>2.0.CO;2, 1999.
Kim, Y.-H., Min, S.-K., Zhang, X., Sillmann, J., and Sandstad, M.: Evaluation of the CMIP6 multi-model ensemble for climate extreme indices, Weather and Climate Extremes, 29, 100269, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wace.2020.100269, 2020.
Li, F., Val Martin, M., Andreae, M. O., Arneth, A., Hantson, S., Kaiser, J. W., Lasslop, G., Yue, C., Bachelet, D., Forrest, M., Kluzek, E., Liu, X., Mangeon, S., Melton, J. R., Ward, D. S., Darmenov, A., Hickler, T., Ichoku, C., Magi, B. I., Sitch, S., van der Werf, G. R., Wiedinmyer, C., and Rabin, S. S.: Historical (1700–2012) global multi-model estimates of the fire emissions from the Fire Modeling Intercomparison Project (FireMIP), Atmos. Chem. Phys., 19, 12545–12567, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-12545-2019, 2019.
Libonati, R., Geirinhas, J. L., Silva, P. S., Monteiro dos Santos, D., Rodrigues, J. A., Russo, A., Peres, L. F., Narcizo, L., Gomes, M. E. R., Rodrigues, A. P., DaCamara, C. C., Pereira, J. M. C., and Trigo, R. M.: Drought–heatwave nexus in Brazil and related impacts on health and fires: A comprehensive review, Ann. NY Acad. Sci., 1517, 44–62, https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.14887, 2022.
Link, R., Snyder, A., Lynch, C., Hartin, C., Kravitz, B., and Bond-Lamberty, B.: Fldgen v1.0: an emulator with internal variability and space–time correlation for Earth system models, Geosci. Model Dev., 12, 1477–1489, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-1477-2019, 2019.
Liu, G., Peng, S., Huntingford, C., and Xi, Y.: A new precipitation emulator (PREMU v1.0) for lower-complexity models, Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 1277–1296, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-1277-2023, 2023.
Lüthi, S., Aznar-Siguan, G., Fairless, C., and Bresch, D. N.: Globally consistent assessment of economic impacts of wildfires in CLIMADA v2.2, Geosci. Model Dev., 14, 7175–7187, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-7175-2021, 2021.
Meinshausen, M., Raper, S. C. B., and Wigley, T. M. L.: Emulating coupled atmosphere-ocean and carbon cycle models with a simpler model, MAGICC6 – Part 1: Model description and calibration, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 11, 1417–1456, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-11-1417-2011, 2011.
Nath, S., Lejeune, Q., Beusch, L., Seneviratne, S. I., and Schleussner, C.-F.: MESMER-M: an Earth system model emulator for spatially resolved monthly temperature, Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 851–877, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-851-2022, 2022.
Nath, S., Gudmundsson, L., Schwaab, J., Duveiller, G., De Hertog, S. J., Guo, S., Havermann, F., Luo, F., Manola, I., Pongratz, J., Seneviratne, S. I., Schleussner, C. F., Thiery, W., and Lejeune, Q.: TIMBER v0.1: a conceptual framework for emulating temperature responses to tree cover change, Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 4283–4313, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-4283-2023, 2023.
Nicholls, Z., Meinshausen, M., Lewis, J., Corradi, M. R., Dorheim, K., Gasser, T., Gieseke, R., Hope, A. P., Leach, N. J., McBride, L. A., Quilcaille, Y., Rogelj, J., Salawitch, R. J., Samset, B. H., Sandstad, M., Shiklomanov, A., Skeie, R. B., Smith, C. J., Smith, S. J., Su, X., Tsutsui, J., Vega-Westhoff, B., and Woodard, D. L.: Reduced Complexity Model Intercomparison Project Phase 2: Synthesising Earth system knowledge for probabilistic climate projections, Earth's Future, 9, e2020EF001900, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EF001900, 2021.
Nicholls, Z. R. J., Meinshausen, M., Lewis, J., Gieseke, R., Dommenget, D., Dorheim, K., Fan, C.-S., Fuglestvedt, J. S., Gasser, T., Golüke, U., Goodwin, P., Hartin, C., Hope, A. P., Kriegler, E., Leach, N. J., Marchegiani, D., McBride, L. A., Quilcaille, Y., Rogelj, J., Salawitch, R. J., Samset, B. H., Sandstad, M., Shiklomanov, A. N., Skeie, R. B., Smith, C. J., Smith, S., Tanaka, K., Tsutsui, J., and Xie, Z.: Reduced Complexity Model Intercomparison Project Phase 1: introduction and evaluation of global-mean temperature response, Geosci. Model Dev., 13, 5175–5190, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-5175-2020, 2020.
O'Neill, B. C., Tebaldi, C., van Vuuren, D. P., Eyring, V., Friedlingstein, P., Hurtt, G., Knutti, R., Kriegler, E., Lamarque, J.-F., Lowe, J., Meehl, G. A., Moss, R., Riahi, K., and Sanderson, B. M.: The Scenario Model Intercomparison Project (ScenarioMIP) for CMIP6, Geosci. Model Dev., 9, 3461–3482, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-3461-2016, 2016.
Perera, A. T. D., Nik, V. M., Chen, D., Scartezzini, J.-L., and Hong, T.: Quantifying the impacts of climate change and extreme climate events on energy systems, Nature Energy, 5, 150–159, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-020-0558-0, 2020.
Qiao, L., Zuo, Z., and Xiao, D.: Evaluation of Soil Moisture in CMIP6 Simulations, J. Climate, 35, 779–800, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0827.1, 2022
Quilcaille, Y.: Code for “Extending MESMER-X: A spatially resolved Earth system model emulator for fire weather and soil moisture” (v1.0), Zenodo [code], https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10300296, 2023.
Quilcaille, Y. and Batibeniz, F.: Fire weather index data under historical and SSP projections in CMIP6 from 1850 to 2100, ETH Bibliography [data set], https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000583391, 2022.
Quilcaille, Y., Gudmundsson, L., Beusch, L., Hauser, M., and Seneviratne, S. I.: Showcasing MESMER-X: Spatially Resolved Emulation of Annual Maximum Temperatures of Earth System Models, Geophys. Res. Lett., 49, e2022GL099012, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GL099012, 2022.
Quilcaille, Y., Batibeniz, F., Ribeiro, A. F. S., Padrón, R. S., and Seneviratne, S. I.: Fire weather index data under historical and shared socioeconomic pathway projections in the 6th phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project from 1850 to 2100, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 2153–2177, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2153-2023, 2023.
Ranasinghe, R., Ruane, A. C., Vautard, R., Arnell, N., Coppola, E., Cruz, F. A., Dessai, S., Islam, A. S., Rahimi, M., Ruiz Carrascal, D., Sillmann, J., Sylla, M. B., Tebaldi, C., Wang, W., and Zaaboul, R.: Climate Change Information for Regional Impact and for Risk Assessment, in: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by: Masson-Delmotte, V., Zhai, P., Pirani, A., Connors, S. L., Péan, C., Berger, S., Caud, N., Chen, Y., Goldfarb, L., Gomis, M. I., Huang, M., Leitzell, K., Lonnoy, E., Matthews, J. B. R., Maycock, T. K., Waterfield, T., Yelekçi, O., Yu, R., and Zhou, B., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 1767–1926, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157896.014, 2021.
Ribeiro, A. F. S., Brando, P. M., Santos, L., Rattis, L., Hirschi, M., Hauser, M., Seneviratne, S. I., and Zscheischler, J.: A compound event-oriented framework to tropical fire risk assessment in a changing climate, Environ. Res. Lett., 17, 065015, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac7342, 2022.
Schaeffer, R., Szklo, A. S., Pereira de Lucena, A. F., Moreira Cesar Borba, B. S., Pupo Nogueira, L. P., Fleming, F. P., Troccoli, A., Harrison, M., and Boulahya, M. S.: Energy sector vulnerability to climate change: A review, Energy, 38, 1–12, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2011.11.056, 2012.
Schewe, J., Gosling, S. N., Reyer, C., Zhao, F., Ciais, P., Elliott, J., Francois, L., Huber, V., Lotze, H. K., Seneviratne, S. I., van Vliet, M. T. H., Vautard, R., Wada, Y., Breuer, L., Büchner, M., Carozza, D. A., Chang, J., Coll, M., Deryng, D., de Wit, A., Eddy, T. D., Folberth, C., Frieler, K., Friend, A. D., Gerten, D., Gudmundsson, L., Hanasaki, N., Ito, A., Khabarov, N., Kim, H., Lawrence, P., Morfopoulos, C., Müller, C., Müller Schmied, H., Orth, R., Ostberg, S., Pokhrel, Y., Pugh, T. A. M., Sakurai, G., Satoh, Y., Schmid, E., Stacke, T., Steenbeek, J., Steinkamp, J., Tang, Q., Tian, H., Tittensor, D. P., Volkholz, J., Wang, X., and Warszawski, L.: State-of-the-art global models underestimate impacts from climate extremes, Nat. Commun., 10, 1005, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-08745-6, 2019.
Seneviratne, S. I., Zhang, X., Adnan, M., Badi, W., Dereczynski, C., Di Luca, A., Ghosh, S., Iskandar, I., Kossin, J., Lewis, S., Otto, F., Pinto, I., Satoh, M., Vicente-Serrano, S. M., Wehner, M., and Zhou, B.: Weather and Climate Extreme Events in a Changing Climate, in: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by: Masson-Delmotte, V., Zhai, P., Pirani, A., Connors, S. L., Péan, C., Berger, S., Caud, N., Chen, Y., Goldfarb, L., Gomis, M. I., Huang, M., Leitzell, K., Lonnoy, E., Matthews, J. B. R., Maycock, T. K., Waterfield, T., Yelekçi, O., Yu, R., and Zhou, B. E., Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157896.013, 2021.
Smith, P., Davis, S. J., Creutzig, F., Fuss, S., Minx, J., Gabrielle, B., Kato, E., Jackson, R. B., Cowie, A., Kriegler, E., Van Vuuren, D. P., Rogelj, J., Ciais, P., Milne, J., Canadell, J. G., McCollum, D., Peters, G., Andrew, R., Krey, V., Shrestha, G., Friedlingstein, P., Gasser, T., Grubler, A., Heidug, W. K., Jonas, M., Jones, C. D., Kraxner, F., Littleton, E., Lowe, J., Moreira, J. R., Nakicenovic, N., Obersteiner, M., Patwardhan, A., Rogner, M., Rubin, E., Sharifi, A., Torvanger, A., Yamagata, Y., Edmonds, J., and Yongsung, C,: Biophysical and economic limits to negative CO2 emissions, Nat. Clim. Change, 6, 42–50, 2016.
Stehfest, E., van Vuuren, D., Kram, T., Bouwman, L., Alkemade, R., Bakkenes, M., Biemans, H., Bouwman, A., den Elzen, M., Janse, J., Lucas, P., van Minnen, J., Müller, M., and Prins, A.: Integrated Assessment of Global Environmental Change with IMAGE 3.0: Model description and policy applications, 336 pp., ISBN 978-94-91506-71-0, 2014.
Tebaldi, C. and Arblaster, J. M.: Pattern scaling: Its strengths and limitations, and an update on the latest model simulations, Climatic Change, 122, 459–471, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-013-1032-9, 2014.
Tebaldi, C., Armbruster, A., Engler, H. P., and Link, R.: Emulating climate extreme indices, Environ. Res. Lett., 15, 074006, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab8332, 2020.
Tebaldi, C., Snyder, A., and Dorheim, K.: STITCHES: creating new scenarios of climate model output by stitching together pieces of existing simulations, Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 1557–1609, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1557-2022, 2022.
van den Hurk, B., Kim, H., Krinner, G., Seneviratne, S. I., Derksen, C., Oki, T., Douville, H., Colin, J., Ducharne, A., Cheruy, F., Viovy, N., Puma, M. J., Wada, Y., Li, W., Jia, B., Alessandri, A., Lawrence, D. M., Weedon, G. P., Ellis, R., Hagemann, S., Mao, J., Flanner, M. G., Zampieri, M., Materia, S., Law, R. M., and Sheffield, J.: LS3MIP (v1.0) contribution to CMIP6: the Land Surface, Snow and Soil moisture Model Intercomparison Project – aims, setup and expected outcome, Geosci. Model Dev., 9, 2809–2832, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-2809-2016, 2016.
van Oldenborgh, G. J., Krikken, F., Lewis, S., Leach, N. J., Lehner, F., Saunders, K. R., van Weele, M., Haustein, K., Li, S., Wallom, D., Sparrow, S., Arrighi, J., Singh, R. K., van Aalst, M. K., Philip, S. Y., Vautard, R., and Otto, F. E. L.: Attribution of the Australian bushfire risk to anthropogenic climate change, Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 941–960, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-941-2021, 2021.
Van Wagner, C. E.: Development and structure of the Canadian forest fire weather index system, Canadian Forestry Service, Ottawa, ISBN 0-662-15198-4, 1987.
Vogel, E., Donat, M. G., Alexander, L. V., Meinshausen, M., Ray, D. K., Karoly, D., Meinshausen, N., and Frieler, K.: The effects of climate extremes on global agricultural yields, Environ. Res. Lett., 14, 054010, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab154b, 2019.
von Buttlar, J., Zscheischler, J., Rammig, A., Sippel, S., Reichstein, M., Knohl, A., Jung, M., Menzer, O., Arain, M. A., Buchmann, N., Cescatti, A., Gianelle, D., Kiely, G., Law, B. E., Magliulo, V., Margolis, H., McCaughey, H., Merbold, L., Migliavacca, M., Montagnani, L., Oechel, W., Pavelka, M., Peichl, M., Rambal, S., Raschi, A., Scott, R. L., Vaccari, F. P., van Gorsel, E., Varlagin, A., Wohlfahrt, G., and Mahecha, M. D.: Impacts of droughts and extreme-temperature events on gross primary production and ecosystem respiration: a systematic assessment across ecosystems and climate zones, Biogeosciences, 15, 1293–1318, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-1293-2018, 2018.
Wang, Q., Wu, J., Lei, T., He, B., Wu, Z., Liu, M., Mo, X., Geng, G., Li, X., Zhou, H., and Liu, D.: Temporal-spatial characteristics of severe drought events and their impact on agriculture on a global scale, Quatern. Int., 349, 10–21, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2014.06.021, 2014.
Watson-Parris, D., Rao, Y., Olivié, D., Seland, Ø., Nowack, P., Camps-Valls, G., Stier, P., Bouabid, S., Dewey, M., Fons, E., Gonzalez, J., Harder, P., Jeggle, K., Lenhardt, J., Manshausen, P., Novitasari, M., Ricard, L., and Roesch, C.: ClimateBench v1.0: A Benchmark for Data-Driven Climate Projections, J. Adv. Model. Earth Sy., 14, e2021MS002954, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021MS002954, 2022.
Wiebe, K., Lotze-Campen, H., Sands, R., Tabeau, A., van der Mensbrugghe, D., Biewald, A., Bodirsky, B., Islam, S., Kavallari, A., Mason-D'Croz, D., Müller, Christoph, Popp, A., Robertson, R., Robinson, S., van Meijl, H., and Willenbockel, D.: Climate change impacts on agriculture in 2050 under a range of plausible socioeconomic and emissions scenarios, Environ. Res. Lett., 10, 085010, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/10/8/085010, 2015.
Wilks, D. S. (Ed.): Statistical methods in the atmospheric sciences, 100, 2–676, ISBN 978-0-12-385022-5, 2011.
Short summary
Climate models are powerful tools, but they have high computational costs, hindering their use in exploring future climate extremes. We demonstrate MESMER-X, the only existing emulator for spatial climate extremes (heatwaves, fires, droughts) that mimics all of their relevant properties. Thanks to its negligible computational cost, MESMER-X may greatly accelerate the exploration of future climate extremes or enable the integration of climate extremes in economic and financial models.
Climate models are powerful tools, but they have high computational costs, hindering their use...
Altmetrics
Final-revised paper
Preprint