Abstract
Changes in extreme cold events (ECEs) attract much attention due to their catastrophic effects on the economy and human life. Although evidence suggests that the frequency, intensity, and duration of ECEs have decreased significantly under global warming, a series of strong ECEs complicates their response to global warming. In this study, a 3D-connected algorithm was first used to detect spatiotemporally continuous ECEs in winter across the Northern Hemisphere (NH) and to evaluate the response of ECEs with varied intensities. Strong and weak ECEs are separated, and they show a distinct response to global warming. Weak ECEs significantly decrease in frequency, projection area and total area over the NH. However, the frequency, projection area and total area of strong ECEs show no significant trend, whereas they are increasing in Siberia and Canada. ECEs are influenced by global warming through both direct effects (increasing surface temperature) and indirect effects (changing atmospheric circulation). Based on the 1pctCO2 experiment from 22 CMIP6 models, the role of indirect effects in the contrast responses of strong and weak ECEs were investigated by removing the direct effect. The results indicate that the indirect effect is responsible for the contrast responses of strong and weak ECEs. The response of strong winter ECEs indicate that the risk of severe disasters remain, which motivates additional research to better prevent economic losses and develop adaptative strategies.
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Data availability
The ERA5 single level data used are available from https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.adbb2d47. Berkeley daily land temperature dataset is available from https://berkeleyearth.org/data/. Figures are made with Proplot version 0.9.5 (Davis, 2021), available under the MIT license at https://github.com/proplot-dev/proplot.
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This work was jointly supported by the National Science Foundation of China (42075018, 42041004) and the Foundation of Gansu Science and Technology Department (21JR7RA529, 22JR5RA405). This work was also supported by the Supercomputing Center of Lanzhou University.
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YH designed and wrote the paper. XW and YH performed statistical analyses and prepared all figures. All authors analyzed and discussed the results, commented on the manuscript, and contributed to the manuscript.
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He, Y., Wang, X., Zhang, B. et al. Contrast responses of strong and weak winter extreme cold events in the Northern Hemisphere to global warming. Clim Dyn 61, 4533–4550 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-06822-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-06822-7