Extreme heat and drought typical of an end-of-century climate could occur over Europe soon and repeatedly

• Published in: Communications Earth & Environment
• Main Authors: Suarez-Gutierrez, L., Müller, W., Marotzke, J.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000D-0944-D; http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000D-0946-B; http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000D-C2DC-0; http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000D-FF4B-1

Extreme heat and drought typical of an end-of-century climate could soon occur over Europe, and repeatedly. Despite the European climate being potentially prone to multi-year successive extremes due to the influence of the North Atlantic variability, it remains unclear how the likelihood of successive extremes changes under warming, how early they could reach end-of-century levels, and how this is affected by internal climate variability. Using the Max Planck Institute Grand Ensemble, we find that even under moderate warming, end-of-century heat and drought levels virtually impossible 20 years ago reach 1-in-10 likelihoods as early as the 2030s. By 2050–2074, two successive years of single or compound end-of-century extremes, unprecedented to date, exceed 1-in-10 likelihoods; while Europe-wide 5-year megadroughts become plausible. Whole decades of end-of-century heat stress could start by 2040, by 2020 for drought, and with a warm North Atlantic, end-of-century decades starting as early as 2030 become twice as likely.