Emerging New Climate Extremes Over Europe

Abstract

Human society and natural systems are intrinsically adapted to the local climate mean and variability. Therefore, changes relative to the local expected variability are highly relevant for assessing impact and planning for adaptation as the climate changes. We analyse the emerging climate signal relative to the diagnosed internal variability (signal-to-noise ratio, S/N) of a set of recently published climate indices over Europe. We calculate the signal-to-noise ratio with respect to a recent baseline (1951-1983) which relates to recent societal experience. In this framework, we find that during the 2000-2016 period, many areas of Europe already experienced significant changes in climate extremes, even when compared to this recent period which is within living memory. In particular, the S/N of extreme temperatures is larger than 1 and 2 over 34% and 4% of Europe, respectively. We also find that about 15% of Europe is experiencing more intense winter precipitation events, while in summer, 7% of Europe is experiencing stronger drought-inducing conditions.