A typology of compound weather and climate events
By Jakob Zscheischler, Olivia Martius, Seth Westra, E. Bevacqua, Colin Raymond, Radley Horton, Bart van den Hurk, Amir Aghakouchak, A. Jézéquel, Miguel D. Mahecha and 5 more. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 2020
1,312 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Compound weather and climate events describe combinations of multiple climate drivers and/or hazards that contribute to societal or environmental risk. Although many climate-related disasters are caused by compound events, the understanding, analysis, quantification and prediction of such events is still in its infancy. In this Review, we propose a typology of compound events and suggest analytical and modelling approaches to aid in their investigation. We organize the highly diverse compound event types according to four themes: preconditioned, where a weather-driven or climate-driven precondition aggravates the impacts of a hazard; multivariate, where multiple drivers and/or hazards lead to an impact; temporally compounding, where a succession of hazards leads to an impact; and spatially compounding, where hazards in multiple connected locations cause an aggregated impact. Through structuring compound events and their respective analysis tools, the typology offers an opportunity for deeper insight into their mechanisms and impacts, benefiting the development of effective adaptation strategies. However, the complex nature of compound events results in some cases inevitably fitting into more than one class, necessitating soft boundaries within the typology. Future work must homogenize the available analytical approaches into a robust toolset for compound-event analysis under present and future climate conditions. Research on compound events has increased vastly in the last several years, yet, a typology was absent. This Review proposes a comprehensive classification scheme, incorporating compound events that are preconditioned, multivariate, temporally compounding and spatially compounding events. Compound events — a combination of multiple drivers and/or hazards that contribute to societal or environmental risk — are responsible for many of the most severe weather-related and climate-related impacts. A classification of compound events is proposed, distinguishing events that are preconditioned, multivariate, temporally compounding and spatially compounding. The typology aids compound-event analysis by facilitating the selection of appropriate analysis and modelling tools. Through altering the distribution of climate variables and their spatial and temporal dependencies, climate change affects the likelihood, nature and impacts of compound events. Bottom-up approaches, which link sectoral impacts to physical hazards, can help understand and, ultimately, better prepare for emerging risks posed by compound events. Compound events — a combination of multiple drivers and/or hazards that contribute to societal or environmental risk — are responsible for many of the most severe weather-related and climate-related impacts. A classification of compound events is proposed, distinguishing events that are preconditioned, multivariate, temporally compounding and spatially compounding. The typology aids compound-event analysis by facilitating the selection of appropriate analysis and modelling tools. Through altering the distribution of climate variables and their spatial and temporal dependencies, climate change affects the likelihood, nature and impacts of compound events. Bottom-up approaches, which link sectoral impacts to physical hazards, can help understand and, ultimately, better prepare for emerging risks posed by compound events.
Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Global and Planetary Change
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6c830d515f04060375c6efb99f1aaafd05e88a01
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In Atmospheric Science
Citations in the corpus
- Recent increasing frequency of compound summer drought and heatwaves in Southeast Brazil (2021, background): “It is now accepted that the univariate analysis of a single climate event typically underestimates the effect of the combination of climatic extremes over different spatial and temporal scales [1, 16].”