Author
Listed:
- Tim Cowan
(University of Southern Queensland
Bureau of Meteorology
School of GeoSciences, The Kings Building, University of Edinburgh)
- Gabriele C. Hegerl
(School of GeoSciences, The Kings Building, University of Edinburgh)
- Andrew Schurer
(School of GeoSciences, The Kings Building, University of Edinburgh)
- Simon F. B. Tett
(School of GeoSciences, The Kings Building, University of Edinburgh)
- Robert Vautard
(Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, UMR 8212 CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, IPSL & Université Paris-Saclay)
- Pascal Yiou
(Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, UMR 8212 CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, IPSL & Université Paris-Saclay)
- Aglaé Jézéquel
(LMD/IPSL, Ecole Normale Superieure, PSL research University
École des Ponts ParisTech, Cité Descartes)
- Friederike E. L. Otto
(Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford)
- Luke J. Harrington
(Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford)
- Benjamin Ng
(CSIRO Climate Science Centre and Centre for Southern Hemisphere Oceans Research)
Abstract
The severe drought of the 1930s Dust Bowl decade coincided with record-breaking summer heatwaves that contributed to the socio-economic and ecological disaster over North America’s Great Plains. It remains unresolved to what extent these exceptional heatwaves, hotter than in historically forced coupled climate model simulations, were forced by sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and exacerbated through human-induced deterioration of land cover. Here we show, using an atmospheric-only model, that anomalously warm North Atlantic SSTs enhance heatwave activity through an association with drier spring conditions resulting from weaker moisture transport. Model devegetation simulations, that represent the wide-spread exposure of bare soil in the 1930s, suggest human activity fueled stronger and more frequent heatwaves through greater evaporative drying in the warmer months. This study highlights the potential for the amplification of naturally occurring extreme events like droughts by vegetation feedbacks to create more extreme heatwaves in a warmer world.
Suggested Citation
Tim Cowan & Gabriele C. Hegerl & Andrew Schurer & Simon F. B. Tett & Robert Vautard & Pascal Yiou & Aglaé Jézéquel & Friederike E. L. Otto & Luke J. Harrington & Benjamin Ng, 2020.
"Ocean and land forcing of the record-breaking Dust Bowl heatwaves across central United States,"
Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 11(1), pages 1-9, December.
Handle:
RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-16676-w
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16676-w
Download full text from publisher
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:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-16676-w. 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.