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The severity of damaging human-induced climate change depends not only on the magnitude of the change but also on the potential for irreversibility. This paper shows that the climate change that takes place due to increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop. Following cessation of emissions, removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide decreases radiative forcing, but is largely compensated by slower loss of heat to the ocean, so that atmospheric temperatures do not drop significantly for at least 1,000 years. Among illustrative irreversible impacts that should be expected if atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increase from current levels near 385 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to a peak of 450-600 ppmv over the coming century are irreversible dry-season rainfall reductions in several regions comparable to those of the "dust bowl" era and inexorable sea level rise. Thermal expansion of the warming ocean provides a conservative lower limit to irreversible global average sea level rise of at least 0.4-1.0 m if 21st century CO2 concentrations exceed 600 ppmv and 0.6-1.9 m for peak CO2 concentrations exceeding ≈1,000 ppmv. Additional contributions from glaciers and ice sheet contributions to future sea level rise are uncertain but may equal or exceed several meters over the next millennium or longer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responses of extreme precipitation to global warming are of great importance to society and ecosystems. Although observations and climate projections indicate a general intensification of extreme precipitation with warming on global scale, there are significant variations on the regional scale, mainly due to changes in the vertical motion associated with extreme precipitation. Here, we apply quasigeostrophic diagnostics on climate-model simulations to understand the changes in vertical motion, quantifying the roles of dry (large-scale adiabatic flow) and moist (small-scale convection) dynamics in shaping the regional patterns of extreme precipitation sensitivity (EPS). The dry component weakens in the subtropics but strengthens in the middle and high latitudes; the moist component accounts for the positive centers of EPS in the low latitudes and also contributes to the negative centers in the subtropics. A theoretical model depicts a nonlinear relationship between the diabatic heating feedback (α) and precipitable water, indicating high sensitivity of α (thus, EPS) over climatological moist regions. The model also captures the change of α due to competing effects of increases in precipitable water and dry static stability under global warming. Thus, the dry/moist decomposition provides a quantitive and intuitive explanation of the main regional features of EPS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We project drought losses in China under global temperature increase of 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C, based on the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) and the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), a cluster analysis method, and "intensity-loss rate" function. In contrast to earlier studies, to project the drought losses, we predict the regional gross domestic product under shared socioeconomic pathways instead of using a static socioeconomic scenario. We identify increasing precipitation and evapotranspiration pattern for the 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C global warming above the preindustrial at 2020-2039 and 2040-2059, respectively. With increasing drought intensity and areal coverage across China, drought losses will soar. The estimated loss in a sustainable development pathway at the 1.5 °C warming level increases 10-fold in comparison with the reference period 1986-2005 and nearly threefold relative to the interval 2006-2015. However, limiting the temperature increase to 1.5 °C can reduce the annual drought losses in China by several tens of billions of US dollars, compared with the 2.0 °C warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A useful starting hypothesis for predictions of changes in precipitation extremes with climate is that those extremes increase at the same rate as atmospheric moisture does, which is ~7% K-1 following the Clausius-Clapeyron (CC) relation. This hypothesis, however, neglects potential changes in the strengths of atmospheric circulations associated with precipitation extremes. As increased moisture leads to increased precipitation, the increased latent heating may lead to stronger large-scale ascent and thus, additional increase in precipitation, leading to a super-CC scaling. This study investigates this possibility in the context of the 2015 Texas extreme precipitation event using the Column Quasi-Geostrophic (CQG) method. Analogs to this event are simulated in different climatic conditions with varying surface temperature (Ts) given the same adiabatic quasigeostrophic forcing. Precipitation in these events exhibits super-CC scaling due to the dynamic contribution associated with increasing ascent due to increased latent heating, an increase with importance that increases with Ts. The thermodynamic contribution (attributable to increasing water vapor; assuming no change in vertical motion) approximately follows CC as expected, while vertical structure changes of moisture and diabatic heating lead to negative but secondary contributions to the sensitivity, reducing the rate of increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts to understand the influence of historical global warming on individual extreme climate events have increased over the past decade. However, despite substantial progress, events that are unprecedented in the local observational record remain a persistent challenge. Leveraging observations and a large climate model ensemble, we quantify uncertainty in the influence of global warming on the severity and probability of the historically hottest month, hottest day, driest year, and wettest 5-d period for different areas of the globe. We find that historical warming has increased the severity and probability of the hottest month and hottest day of the year at >80% of the available observational area. Our framework also suggests that the historical climate forcing has increased the probability of the driest year and wettest 5-d period at 57% and 41% of the observed area, respectively, although we note important caveats. For the most protracted hot and dry events, the strongest and most widespread contributions of anthropogenic climate forcing occur in the tropics, including increases in probability of at least a factor of 4 for the hottest month and at least a factor of 2 for the driest year. We also demonstrate the ability of our framework to systematically evaluate the role of dynamic and thermodynamic factors such as atmospheric circulation patterns and atmospheric water vapor, and find extremely high statistical confidence that anthropogenic forcing increased the probability of record-low Arctic sea ice extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is expected to increase future temperatures, potentially resulting in reduced crop production in many key production regions. Research quantifying the complex relationship between weather variables and wheat yields is rapidly growing, and recent advances have used a variety of model specifications that differ in how temperature data are included in the statistical yield equation. A unique data set that combines Kansas wheat variety field trial outcomes for 1985-2013 with location-specific weather data is used to analyze the effect of weather on wheat yield using regression analysis. Our results indicate that the effect of temperature exposure varies across the September-May growing season. The largest drivers of yield loss are freezing temperatures in the Fall and extreme heat events in the Spring.We alsofind that the overall effect of warming on yields is negative, even after accounting for the benefits of reduced exposure tofreezing temperatures. Our analysis indicates that there exists a tradeoff between average (mean) yield and ability to resist extreme heat across varieties. More-recently released varieties are less able to resist heat than older lines. Our results also indicate that warming effects would be partially offset by increased rainfall in the Spring. Finally, we find that the method used to construct measures of temperature exposure matters for both the predictive performance of the regression model and the forecasted warming impacts on yields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global warming increases the occurrence probability of hot extremes, and improving the predictability of such events is thus becoming of critical importance. Hot extremes have been shown to be induced by surface moisture deficits in some regions. In this study, we assess whether such a relationship holds at the global scale. We find that wide areas of the world display a strong relationship between the number of hot days in the regions' hottest month and preceding precipitation deficits. The occurrence probability of an above-average number of hot days is over 70% after precipitation deficits in most parts of South America as well as the Iberian Peninsula and Eastern Australia, and over 60% in most of North America and Eastern Europe, while it is below 30-40% after wet conditions in these regions. Using quantile regression analyses, we show that the impact of precipitation deficits on the number of hot days is asymmetric, i.e. extreme high numbers of hot days are most strongly influenced. This relationship also applies to the 2011 extreme event in Texas. These findings suggest that effects of soil moisture-temperature coupling are geographically more widespread than commonly assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]