IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcli/v8y2018i5d10.1038_s41558-018-0116-y.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Early emergence of anthropogenically forced heat waves in the western United States and Great Lakes

Author

Listed:
  • Hosmay Lopez

    (University of Miami
    NOAA)

  • Robert West

    (Florida State University)

  • Shenfu Dong

    (NOAA)

  • Gustavo Goni

    (NOAA)

  • Ben Kirtman

    (University of Miami)

  • Sang-Ki Lee

    (NOAA)

  • Robert Atlas

    (NOAA)

Abstract

Climate projections for the twenty-first century suggest an increase in the occurrence of heat waves. However, the time at which externally forced signals of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) emerge against background natural variability (time of emergence (ToE)) has been challenging to quantify, which makes future heat-wave projections uncertain. Here we combine observations and model simulations under present and future forcing to assess how internal variability and ACC modulate US heat waves. We show that ACC dominates heat-wave occurrence over the western United States and Great Lakes regions, with ToE that occurred as early as the 2020s and 2030s, respectively. In contrast, internal variability governs heat waves in the northern and southern Great Plains, where ToE occurs in the 2050s and 2070s; this later ToE is believed to be a result of a projected increase in circulation variability, namely the Great Plain low-level jet. Thus, greater mitigation and adaptation efforts are needed in the Great Lakes and western United States regions.

Suggested Citation

  • Hosmay Lopez & Robert West & Shenfu Dong & Gustavo Goni & Ben Kirtman & Sang-Ki Lee & Robert Atlas, 2018. "Early emergence of anthropogenically forced heat waves in the western United States and Great Lakes," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 8(5), pages 414-420, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcli:v:8:y:2018:i:5:d:10.1038_s41558-018-0116-y
    DOI: 10.1038/s41558-018-0116-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0116-y
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41558-018-0116-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vittal Hari & Subimal Ghosh & Wei Zhang & Rohini Kumar, 2022. "Strong influence of north Pacific Ocean variability on Indian summer heatwaves," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-11, December.
    2. Yue Sui & Yuting Chen, 2022. "Signals in temperature extremes emerge in China during the last millennium based on CMIP5 simulations," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 172(3), pages 1-18, June.
    3. Dan Wanyama & Erin L. Bunting & Nicholas Weil & David Keellings, 2023. "Delineating and characterizing changes in heat wave events across the United States climate regions," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 176(2), pages 1-23, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcli:v:8:y:2018:i:5:d:10.1038_s41558-018-0116-y. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.