Increased impact of heat domes on 2021-like heat extremes in North America under global warming

During summer 2021, Western North America (WNA) experienced an unprecedented heatwave with record-breaking high temperatures associated with a strong anomalous high-pressure system, i.e., a heat dome. Here, we use a flow analog method and find that the heat dome over the WNA can explain half of the magnitude of the anomalous temperature. The intensities of hot extremes associated with similar heat dome-like atmospheric circulations increase faster than background global warming in both historical change and future projection. Such relationship between hot extremes and mean temperature can be partly explained by soil moisture-atmosphere feedback. The probability of 2021-like heat extremes is projected to increase due to the background warming, the enhanced soil moisture-atmosphere feedback and the weak but still significantly increased probability of the heat dome-like circulation. The population exposure to such heat extremes will also increase. Limiting global warming to 1.5 °C instead of 2 °C (3 °C) would lead to an avoided impact of 53% (89%) of the increase in population exposure to 2021-like heat extremes under the RCP8.5-SSP5 scenario.

Xing Zhang, Tianjun Zhou, Wenxia Zhang, Liwen Ren, Jie Jiang, Shuai Hu, Meng Zuo, Lixia Zhang, Wenmin Man