Shifting dominant periods in extreme climate impacts under global warming

Spatio-temporal patterns of extreme climate events have been extensively studied, yet two questions remain underexplored: Do such events occur regularly, and how do regularity patterns change under global warming? We address these questions by investigating dominant periods in crop failure, heatwave, and wildfire data. Here, we show that under pre-industrial conditions dominant periods emerge in 28% of cropland exposed to crop failure and 10% of wildfire-affected areas, likely related to climatic oscillations such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, while heatwaves occur irregularly. The number of dominant periods increases by 2-13% during the transition from the pre-industrial era to the anthropocene. In the anthropocene, the occurrence of extreme events shifts towards monotonic growth, replacing previous natural regularity patterns. Linearly de-trended projections reveal an additional shift towards smaller dominant periods due to climate change. These shifts in regularity are crucial for adaptation planning, and our method offers an additional approach for studying extreme events.

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Publication Details

Journal
Nature Communications
Published
2025-11-05
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-65600-7
Citations
2
Primary Topic
Ecosystem dynamics and resilience
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
2.21

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article

Shifting dominant periods in extreme climate impacts under global warming

Kedar Otta, Karim Zantout, Toshichika Iizumi, Julia M. Schneider et al.
2 citations
Nature Communications
Ecosystem dynamics and resilience
2.21
article

Shifting dominant periods in extreme climate impacts under global warming

Kedar Otta, Karim Zantout, Toshichika Iizumi, Julia M. Schneider, Maik Billing, Florian Zabel, Christian Folberth, Mengxue Li, Stijn Hantson, Atul K. Jain, Sam S. Rabin, Clemens Scheer, Nikolay Khabarov, Katja Frieler, Christopher Reyer, Juraj Balkovič, Tobias Hank, Jonas Jägermeyr, Sian Kou‐Giesbrecht, Simon N. Gosling, Sebastian Ostberg, Jacob Schewe, Tzu‐Shun Lin, Fang Li, Wenfeng Liu, Christoph Müller, Akihiko Ito, Masashi Okada
article en
2 citations

Abstract

Spatio-temporal patterns of extreme climate events have been extensively studied, yet two questions remain underexplored: Do such events occur regularly, and how do regularity patterns change under global warming? We address these questions by investigating dominant periods in crop failure, heatwave, and wildfire data. Here, we show that under pre-industrial conditions dominant periods emerge in 28% of cropland exposed to crop failure and 10% of wildfire-affected areas, likely related to climatic oscillations such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, while heatwaves occur irregularly. The number of dominant periods increases by 2-13% during the transition from the pre-industrial era to the anthropocene. In the anthropocene, the occurrence of extreme events shifts towards monotonic growth, replacing previous natural regularity patterns. Linearly de-trended projections reveal an additional shift towards smaller dominant periods due to climate change. These shifts in regularity are crucial for adaptation planning, and our method offers an additional approach for studying extreme events.

Nature CommunicationsVol. 16(1)
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (DE), NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (US), Goddard Institute for Space Studies (US), International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (AT), National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (JP), University of Nottingham (GB), University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US), Simon Fraser University (CA), University of Basel (CH), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN), National Institute for Environmental Studies (JP), Huawei Technologies (China) (CN), Leibniz Association (DE), Institute of Atmospheric Physics (CN), China Agricultural University (CN), Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (DE), Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences (DE), The University of Tokyo (JP), Columbia University (US), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (DE), Universidad del Rosario (CO)
Margot Marsh Biodiversity Foundation, Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency, European Commission, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Austrian Science Fund, EarthLab, University of Washington, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, National Key Research and Development Program of China
Openalex Percentile: Top 11%
Ecosystem dynamics and resilience
2.21
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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