Intensification of compound wind drought and heatwave events under climate change.

Compound wind drought and heatwave events over global land are projected to intensify under climate change, with frequency rising by 100 to 750% by 2100 and duration increasing by 80 to 300%.

• Why it matters: Power-system stability risks from co-occurring low winds and high temperatures are expected to grow, but future changes and physical drivers are not well quantified.
• What they did: Daily output from 27 downscaled CMIP6 models (~25 km) was analyzed across low- to high-CO2 scenarios, and an emergent-constraint approach related observed historical trends to projections.
• The result: Thermodynamic warming and widespread wind stilling drive the intensification, with regional amplification from enhanced variability and stronger wind-temperature coupling near poleward jet streams; emergent constraints reduce intermodel variance by 10 to 40%.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.