Identification of compound drought and heatwave events on a daily scale and across four seasons

Abstract

Compound drought and heatwave (CDHW) events can result in intensified damage to ecosystems, economies, and societies, especially on a warming planet. Although it has been reported that CDHW events in the winter season can also affect insects, birds, and the occurrence of wildfires, the literature generally focuses exclusively on the summer season. Moreover, the coarse temporal resolution of droughts as determined on a monthly scale may hamper the precise identification of the start and/or end dates of CDHW events. Therefore, we propose a method to identify CDHW events on a daily scale that is applicable across the four seasons. More specifically, we use standardized indices calculated on a daily scale to identify four types of compound events in a systematic way. Based on the hypothesis that droughts or heatwaves should be statistically extreme and independent, we remove minor dry or warm spells and merge mutually dependent ones. To demonstrate our method, we make use of 120 years of daily precipitation and temperature information observed at Uccle, Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium. Our method yields more precise start and end dates for droughts and heatwaves than those that can be obtained with a classical approach acting on a monthly scale, thereby allowing for a better identification of CDHW events. Consistent with existing literature, we find an increase in the number of days in CDHW events at Uccle, mainly due to the increasing frequency of heatwaves. Our results also reveal a seasonality in CDHW events, as droughts and heatwaves are negatively dependent on one another in the winter season at Uccle, whereas they are positively dependent on one another in the other seasons. Overall, the method proposed in this study is shown to be robust and displays potential for exploring how year-round CDHW events influence ecosystems.