Compound wind and precipitation extremes at a global scale based on CMIP6 models: Evaluation, projection and uncertainty

Abstract

AbstractCompound wind and precipitation extremes (CWPEs) amplify risk to human health, socio‐economic and ecological systems relative to their single extreme meteorological events. Given the rise in weather and climate extremes resulting from global warming, it is crucial to evaluate the ability of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) models to capture this bivariate compound event and explore projected changes of CWPEs in the future under different climate‐change scenarios—the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios. In this study, we first evaluate 14 CMIP6 models at a global scale using the ERA5 reanalysis data set spanning 1979–2014. Overall, some of the CMIP6 models, especially the multi‐model ensemble mean (MMEM), can reasonably capture CWPEs during the historical period, with more CWPEs in the northern and southern hemispheres during their respective cold seasons. However, the MMEM tends to overestimate CWPEs in some land areas and show underestimation in some oceanic regions. Then we compute projected changes of CWPEs in periods 1 (2041–2070) and 2 (2071–2100) under SSP1‐2.6, SSP2‐4.5 and SSP5‐8.5 scenarios. Low emission scenarios effectively mitigate the long‐term increase in future CWPEs. The occurrence of CWPEs will change significantly with the increase of emissions during period 2, particularly in polar regions. Finally, we quantify the uncertainty for global future projections of CWPE changes. The main sources of uncertainty are internal variability and model uncertainty, but the contribution of scenario uncertainty will increase as time progresses. Overall, our results provide useful information to cope with CWPEs' global impact, emphasizing the importance of incorporating the compound nature of weather and climate extremes in future climate projections.