Article in Nature | The future of summer heat waves | Richard Bintanja

The future of summer heat waves
Climate models show that future summers will be considerable warmer than today – the scorching summer of 2003 will become an ordinary summer in 2050. This is caused by greenhouse forcing and amplified by specific climate processes, in particular the processes that links spring soil drying, reduced surface evaporation and summer warming. This process acts on seasonal but also on century timescales. This study employs this process to constrain uncertainties in the projections of future summer warming. In particular hot and dry continental areas, such as southern Europe, exhibit decreasing surface evaporation and extremely hot summers. With different climate models exhibiting different strengths of this processes it is possible to constrain future warming from the current model bias by as much as 50%. Given the huge potential impacts of extreme warming on health, agriculture and water management, such a reduction in the range of possible projection is imperative for relevant mitigation and adaptation strategies.
Article:
Authors: Selten, F.M., Bintanja, R., Vautard, R., van den Hurk, B.
Title: Future continental summer warming constrained by the present-day seasonal cycle of surface hydrology.
More information
Last modified: | 01 August 2022 11.59 a.m. |
More news
-
24 March 2025
UG 28th in World's Most International Universities 2025 rankings
The University of Groningen has been ranked 28th in the World's Most International Universities 2025 by Times Higher Education. With this, the UG leaves behind institutions such as MIT and Harvard. The 28th place marks an increase of five places: in...
-
05 March 2025
Women in Science
The UG celebrates International Women’s Day with a special photo series: Women in Science.
-
16 December 2024
Jouke de Vries: ‘The University will have to be flexible’
2024 was a festive year for the University of Groningen. In this podcast, Jouke de Vries, the chair of the Executive Board, looks back.