Weather and Climate Extremes (Dec 2020)
Drought-related hot summers: A joint probability analysis in the Iberian Peninsula
Abstract
Droughts and hot extremes are major sources of risk to several socio-economic activities and their impacts are expected to increase under future global warming. Moreover, the simultaneous or sequential occurrence (compound events) of different climate extremes may lead to the amplification of the associated impacts. Even though the latest efforts in assessing hot and dry extremes and their interactions, the development of models describing the joint behavior of climate extremes is still a challenge. To contribute to the understanding of these compound events, we propose to assess the probability of extremely hot summer days in the Iberian Peninsula (IP) being preceded by drought events in spring and early summer, based on their joint probability distribution through copula theory. The precursor drought hazard was characterized by the Standardized Precipitation Evaporation Index (SPEI) for the months of May, June and July for different timescales (3-, 6- and 9-months). The Number of Hot Days per month (NHD) summed over the months of July and August were considered for modelling. The dependence structure between SPEI and NHD was very well identified for the most of the IP's regions by asymmetrical copulas with upper tail dependence (except in northwestern regions), suggesting that compound hot and dry extremes are strongly associated. The results show that the transition from previous wet to dry regimes increases substantially the probability of exceeding summer NHD extreme values, depending on the region and the drought timescale and target month. The results suggest a spatial heterogeneity over the IP when characterizing the influence of water deficits on following summer extreme temperatures, whereas northeastern, western and central regions were found to be the regions more prone to summer hot extremes induced by dryness, in contrast to southwestern, northwestern and southeastern regions (depending on the month and the timescale). This study provides estimates of the probability of drought-related hot extremes in the summer of the IP for different regions, which could be an important tool for responsible authorities to mitigate the impacts magnified by the interactions between the different hazards.
