Rapid flips between warm and cold extremes in a warming world
Rapid temperature flips are sudden shifts from extreme warm to cold or vice versa-both challenge humans and ecosystems by leaving a very short time to mitigate two contrasting extremes, but are yet to be understood. Here, we provide a global assessment of rapid temperature flips from 1961 to 2100. Warm-to-cold flips favorably follow wetter and cloudier conditions, while cold-to-warm flips exhibit an opposite feature. Of the global areas defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, over 60% have experienced more frequent, intense, and rapid flips since 1961, and this trend will expand to most areas in the future. During 2071-2100 under SSP5-8.5, we detect increases of 6.73-8.03% in flip frequency (relative to 1961-1990), 7.16-7.32% increases in intensity, and 2.47-3.24% decreases in transition duration. Global population exposure will increase over onefold, which is exacerbated in low-income countries (4.08-6.49 times above the global average). Our findings underscore the urgency to understand and mitigate the accelerating hazard flips under global warming.
Authors
- David Yongqin Chen
- Ming Luo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5474-3892)
- Faith Ka Shun Chan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6091-6596)
- Xiaocong Xu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3773-0811)
- Yimin Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4025-6169)
- Tao Pei (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5311-8761)
- Yuanchao Fan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3462-1820)
- Wei Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8134-6908)
- Lin Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3557-1853)
- Erjia Ge (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3622-3287)
- Weilin Liao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9681-6631)
- Lijie Lin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7548-7093)
- Zhixin Qi
- Xiaoyu Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-6140-5142)
- Zhen Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7749-2977)
- Jianfeng Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9288-3415)
- Yijing Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9584-5406)
- Ziwei Huang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6994-9017)
- Sijia Wu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8921-9839)
- Gabriel Ngar‐Cheung Lau
- Xiaoping Liu
Institutions
- Utah State University (US)
- University of Nottingham Ningbo China (CN)
- Guangdong University of Technology (CN)
- Sun Yat-sen University (CN)
- Chinese University of Hong Kong (HK)
- University of Toronto (CA)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Princeton University (US)
- Fudan University (CN)
- Tsinghua–Berkeley Shenzhen Institute (CN)
- Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CN)
- Public Health Ontario (CA)
- Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application (CN)
- Institute of Atmospheric Physics (CN)
- Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (CN)
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Tsinghua University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2025-04-22
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58544-5
- Citations
- 29
- Primary Topic
- Climate variability and models
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 32.05