cover image: Characterizing heatwaves based on land surface energy budget

Characterizing heatwaves based on land surface energy budget

23 Oct 2024

Heat extremes pose pronounced threats to social-ecological systems and are projected to become more intense, frequent, and longer. However, the mechanisms driving heatwaves vary across heatwave types and are not yet fully understood. Here we decompose perturbations in the surface energy budget to categorize global heatwave-days into four distinct types: sunny–humid (38%), sunny-dry (26%), advective (18%), and adiabatic (18%). Notably, sunny-dry heatwave-days decrease net ecosystem carbon uptake by 0.09 gC m−2 day−1 over harvested areas, while advective heatwave-days increase the thermal stress index by 6.20 K in populated regions. In addition, from 2000 to 2020, sunny-dry heatwaves have shown the most widespread increase compared to 1979 to 1999, with 67% of terrestrial areas experiencing a doubling in their occurrence. Our findings highlight the importance of classifying heatwave-days based on their underlying mechanisms, as this can enhance our understanding of heatwaves and improve strategies for heat adaptation.
rd1 - earth system analysis

Authors

Tian, Yinglin, Kleidon, Axel, Lesk, Corey, Zhou, Sha, Luo, Xiangzhong, Ghausi, Sarosh Alam, Wang, Guangqian, Zhong, Deyu, Zscheischler, Jakob

Related Organizations

Beijing Normal University
Columbia University
Dartmouth College
European Union
National University of Singapore
Tsinghua University
Citation
Tian, Y., Kleidon, A., Lesk, C., Zhou, S., Luo, X., Ghausi, S. A., Wang, G., Zhong, D., Zscheischler, J. (2024): Characterizing heatwaves based on land surface energy budget. - Communications Earth and Environment, 5, 617.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01784-y
Pages
9
Published in
Germany
Rights Holder
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Table of Contents