Weather and Climate Extremes (Dec 2020)
A database for characteristics and variations of global compound dry and hot events
Abstract
Compound dry and hot events (CDHEs) are commonly defined as occurrences of dry and hot events at the same time or in close succession. These events have occurred frequently in past decades and caused great losses to multiple sectors including water security, food security, and human health. This calls for an improved understanding of their characteristics and variations. This study provides a database for different characteristics, including frequency, severity, duration, and magnitude, and their variations of CDHEs for the period 1951–2012 over global land areas. We first demonstrate different characteristics of CDHEs during the summers of 2003 and 2010 in Europe to compare these two events from different perspectives. We then evaluate changes in different characteristics of CDHEs over global land areas for the past 62 years. The frequency, severity, duration, and magnitude of CDHEs during 1951–2012 show temporal increases over global land areas with the slope of 0.15 days/decade, 0.25%/decade, 0.06 days/decade, and 0.52%/decade, respectively. Besides, remarkable increases in these characteristics are observed in regions such as central Africa, Europe, Mediterranean regions, and northern parts of East Asia. The results of this study could shed light on ways to improve the documentation and understanding of CDHEs to mitigate their negative impacts.
