Time of emergence in climate extremes corresponding to Köppen-Geiger classification

Abstract

Extreme climate events can pose huge threats to human safety and industrial and agricultural production. Therefore, investigating the time of emergence (TOE) of climate extremes is essential to policymakers, especially residents suffering from related climate disasters. However, there is still a lack of work focused on the TOE of climate extremes over the whole global land and aggregated climate subtypes. Here, we employed phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) multi-models to calculate the TOE of 27 widely used Expert Team for Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI) indices for the sake of analyzing the intensity, frequency, and duration of extreme temperature and extreme precipitation characteristics comprehensively based on Köppen-Geiger climate classification. We found the temperature indices change prior to the precipitation indices in general, and are more uniformly in spatial distributions of TOE. Regionally, the warming and wetting trends are obvious in Tropical areas. Arid areas are likely to witness tiny changes for most precipitation indices. Temperate areas are the most similar climate subtype to the mean state of the global land. The substantially earlier TOE of precipitation indices in Continental and Polar areas highlights the need for an early warning system. The findings of this study will help policymakers take targeted preventive measures to deal with specific extreme events in an adaptation to local conditions.

Keywords

• Time of emergence
• Temperature extremes
• Precipitation extremes
• Köppen-Geiger climate classification
• CMIP5 models