Understanding and accurately projecting changes in these hazards, their compounding nature, and their interactions with local socioeconomics and population changes is as complex as it is important to avoid future harm. This requires conversations across a broad range of disciplines: physical sciences, climate risk-modelling, statistics and machine learning, geography, and socioeconomic sciences. Recent record-breaking extreme weather events highlight the urgent need to improve our scientific understanding and modelling capacities for informed adaptation measures, policy decisions, and early warning systems.
This session showcases recent research progress in our understanding of weather and climate hazards under past, present, and future climate conditions, including advances in modelling and projections over decadal to centennial timescales. By fostering interdisciplinary discussions, we aim to identify outstanding research questions and form new collaborations; for instance, which hazards receive less attention from the community in specific geographical regions? Which hazard sectors should work more closely with weather and climate scientists to make progress?
We invite contributions on the changing risk and prediction from natural hazards, including but not limited to studies of:
- Detection and attribution of climate and weather hazards and impacts
- Drivers and trends in unprecedented and compound weather extremes
- Advances in climate and weather hazard and impact modelling
- Trends in hazards on decadal to centennial timescales
- Extreme weather early warning systems
- Global weather and climate teleconnections and their links to environmental hazards and impacts
-Interactions between climate and weather hazards with local socioeconomics and adaptation strategies
Orals: Mon, 4 May, 08:30–10:15 | Room D2
Multiple recent weather and climate disasters have shattered assumptions about the nature of regional climate risks. This power of surprise comes not just from the unprecedented severity of the disasters’ component hazards, but from the intricate system interactions that have led to their devastating impacts. The usual tools for risk characterization are particularly challenged by events that, like these, stretch the limits of experience, observation, imagination, and/or modeling capability. Here, we draw from several recent projects to describe the development and application of ‘complex-risk’ storylines that arc from blue-sky discussion of fundamental uncertainties and event conceptualization through to hazard-impact-response cascades and potential state changes in natural and human systems. Such storylines entrain diverse types of knowledge to flexibly envision and strategize for yet-unrealized risks spanning a range of timescales and socioenvironmental conditions. We use our narrative set to identify 12 major emergent themes across physical, social, and institutional domains, and discuss how these themes can contribute crucial guidance for anticipating what the next unprecedented disaster might look like — and thus how to design basic and applied research that speaks to it. The themes also provide a framework that helps highlight historically overlooked geographies, hazard combinations, and event dynamics. We conclude by enumerating several stubborn cross-disciplinary challenges that we see complicating extreme-weather risk calculations, and discuss the potential for this storyline approach, among other techniques, to foster productive insights.
How to cite: Raymond, C., Singh, D., Drakes, O., Helgeson, J., Hereid, K., Loikith, P., AghaKouchak, A., Sebastian, A., Kruczkiewicz, A., Leung, L. R., Mauger, G., Mote, P., Ruane, A., Steen-Adams, M., and Phillips, A.: Hazards Beyond Belief: Storylines for the most extreme disasters, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-17552, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-17552, 2026.
The European continent has experienced severe wildfire activity in multiple regions as a result of extreme drought and heat events in recent years, particularly in 2003, 2017 and 2018. Quantifying how climate change has altered the likelihood of extreme wildfire occurrence and its accompanying fire weather conditions remains challenging due to strong internal climate variability and short observational records.
Here, we quantify changes in the probability of extreme wildfire conditions considering four fire weather indicators: the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI), drought conditions (i.e. 3-month Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index; SPEI-3M), heat (maximum temperature; Tmax) and atmospheric moisture demand (vapor pressure deficit; VPD). First, we assess the return periods of the four fire weather indicators during these extreme wildfire periods under observed climate using CERRA reanalysis data (2001-2020). Second, we quantify how the likelihood of conditions that describe observed extreme wildfire periods changes between preindustrial, present, 2°C and 3°C global warming levels, by bootstrapping data from the 100-member Community Earth System Model Large Ensemble (CESM2-LE).
We show that the probability of fire weather conditions during observed extreme wildfire periods increases nonlinearly with global warming. The probability of the FWI as found during these extreme wildfire periods doubled from preindustrial to present levels and is projected to increase three- and seven-fold under 2°C and 3°C of global warming, respectively. For SPEI-3M, VPD and Tmax we find even stronger increases. Our results highlight the substantial benefits of limiting global warming to well below 2°C for reducing wildfire-relevant climate extremes.
How to cite: Miller, J., Touma, D., Li, X., Prein, A., and Brunner, M.: Likelihood of observed fire weather extremes in Europe increases nonlinearly from preindustrial to 3°C warming, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-3588, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-3588, 2026.
Concerns surrounding climate-driven shifts in wildfire risks in North America have motivated a new model of wildfire risk projections for Canada. Canada has experienced an acceleration of wildfire activity in the last decades, with significant impacts on infrastructure, resources, and livelihoods. However, current and future wildfire exposure and its associated financial costs are still poorly quantified. First Street has computed the first climate-adjusted, asset-specific estimates of Canadian wildfire risk. These estimates include the effects of a changing climate, and projected exposure estimates for today as well as 30 and 100 years into the future. These estimates were constructed using large numbers of Monte Carlo simulations using the ELMFIRE fire behavior model, driven by a time series of hourly NOAA RTMA surface weather observations and a novel fuels dataset for Canada derived by First Street from both satellite and in situ data sources. Statistical methods were used to adjust the weather time series using WCRP CMIP6 future climate projections for 2055 and 2100 under the SSP126, SSP245, and SSP585 scenarios to reflect future air temperature, humidity, and precipitation conditions. Historic ignition locations were used as the basis for an ignition density field to initiate modeled fires for all scenarios. The resulting wildfire hazard exposure estimates are expressed as burn probability, flame length (mean and maximum), and ember exposure at 30m horizontal resolution for all of Canada below the Arctic Circle. The resulting exposure levels enable the climate-driven risk evaluation of each of the approximately 17M homes and businesses in Canada, including those within the Wildland Urban Interface. The model predicts a larger number of fires, increases in wildfire burn probability and a greater number of exposed assets under future CMIP6 scenarios, driven mainly by changes to fuels states in a warming climate.
How to cite: Kearns, E., Fuller, K., Cunningham, P., Maneta, M., Zambri, B., Ross, W., and Amodeo, M.: A Novel Model of Canadian Wildfire Risk for Climate Assessments, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-15072, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-15072, 2026.
The increasing frequency and intensity of extreme events require a shift from isolated hazard assessments towards a more nuanced understanding of complex risks. Recent research highlights that the impact of natural hazards are often impacted by complex disaster-disease outbreak dynamics, where the cascading effects of extreme events trigger delayed but devastating public health emergencies. This research addresses the urgent need to incorporate the temporal dynamics of such risks, specifically the occurrence of disease outbreaks following climate-driven disasters.
By establishing global spatiotemporal footprints of disease outbreaks, we identify hotspots of overlapping events and quantify the critical time lags between environmental triggers and public health crises. We use statistical frameworks, including Event Coincidence Analysis (ECA) to explore the relationships between climate extremes (including heavy precipitation, high temperatures, and humidity) and the subsequent risk of cholera.
By combining climatic and environmental indicators with socioeconomic variables, including healthcare accessibility and human development indices, this research provides a predictive framework for early warning systems. Ultimately, this interdisciplinary approach bridges the gap between climate science and public health, offering practitioners the tools necessary to respond to the escalating complexity of disaster risk in a changing climate.
How to cite: de Ruiter, M., Li, H., and Jäger, W.: Beyond Single Hazards: The Temporal Dynamics of Consecutive Climate-Health Disasters , EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-22844, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-22844, 2026.
In recent years, an increasing frequency of heatwaves and drought events have been experienced, with growing socioeconomic and environmental impacts, particularly in the agricultural sector. The occurrence of these compound extremes in consecutive years amplifies their effects, leading to greater economic losses. Consecutive droughts can significantly affect vegetation growth and place additional stress on agricultural systems. When hot and dry compound extremes occur over multiple years, their impacts become even more pronounced, as they hinder the recovery of crops and strongly affect agricultural productivity.
In this study, we explore the use of univariate, bivariate and temporal compound attribution to show how climate change is influencing the probability of single, compound, and consecutive extreme events. In particular, we propose a case study in Belgium to investigate how the probability of consecutive extremes is changing in a warmer climate. The aim of the study is to highlight the urgency of increasing attention on both the impact of the single events and the larger impacts that can be caused by the more frequent consecutive extremes and consecutive co-occurrent extremes. Finally, we discuss some of possible implications of these findings for policymakers and practitioners involved in climate adaptation and risk management.
How to cite: Deidda, C., Barnes, C., De Michele, C., Willems, P., Zscheischler, J., and Thiery, W.: Attributing consecutive hot and dry compound events to climate change, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-14729, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-14729, 2026.
Hydroclimate volatility describes large and/or rapid swings between extremely dry and extremely wet conditions that can compound impacts on human and ecological systems by clustering extremes in time. Although the basic theoretical link between warming and increased precipitation volatility has long been recognised, our understanding about the magnitude and physical mechanisms behind broader definitions of hydroclimate volatility remains limited.
We employ a ‘hydroclimate whiplash’ metric based on the Standardised Precipitation–Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) and focus on high-impact events (n=9) building upon the framework established by Swain et al. (2025) to assess anthropogenic contributions to changes in whiplash intensity. Specifically, we use circulation-nudged simulations from three different climate models under present-day and pre-industrial forcing, following a storyline approach. By constraining the large-scale circulation to observations, nudged simulations enable the analysis of observed rare extreme events with a high signal-to-noise ratio while also allowing a comparison across datasets. Furthermore, prescribing the dynamical component in this way isolates the thermodynamic response to anthropogenic forcing, which is crucial, as thermodynamic processes are the predominant driver of changes in hydroclimate volatility. The simulations are evaluated against observations to ensure that spatial patterns, seasonal variability, and temporal correlations are realistically represented across the regions.
Preliminary results show a robust anthropogenic increase in whiplash intensity across most events, albeit with substantial event-to-event heterogeneity. Decomposition into precipitation and potential evapotranspiration (PET) components indicates that the most consistent signal arises from PET-driven drying during the dry phase, reflecting a thermodynamic warming response that enhances atmospheric evaporative demand. Precipitation-related contributions can also be substantial but are more event specific.
This research provides the first multi-model attribution of hydroclimate whiplash intensity, demonstrating that the anthropogenic influence can be detected in rare and complex compound extremes using circulation-nudged storyline climate models.
References:
Swain, D.L., Prein, A.F., Abatzoglou, J.T., Albano, C.M., Brunner, M., Diffenbaugh, N.S., Singh, D., Skinner, C.B. & Touma, D. (2025). Hydroclimate volatility on a warming Earth. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 6(1), 35-50.
How to cite: Merz, N., Zscheischler, J., Dunkl, I., Sippel, S., Benítez, A. S., Goessling, H., and Bevacqua, E.: Disentangling the anthropogenic influence on the intensity of recent hydroclimate whiplash events via multiple nudged climate simulations, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-10541, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-10541, 2026.
Global mean temperature has increased in recent decades and is projected to continue rising throughout the 21st century, affecting climate extremes. In particular, compound extreme events, the combination of two or more drivers or hazards (not necessarily extreme individually) whose interaction can amplify impacts, are expected to become more frequent, making their thorough assessment a hot topic for research.
This work presents a global-scale characterization, evaluation and projection of temperature–precipitation compound extreme events and assesses their frequency as well as the spell-related metrics. A threshold-based classification is introduced to define and quantify compound-event occurrence across multiple categories, allowing a robust intercomparison through different climate regimes without fixing a unique “extreme” definition. Based on daily temperature and precipitation over the three-month window centered around the climatologically hottest month for each location, four categories were defined to cover hot-dry, very hot-dry, hot-wet and very hot-wet conditions.
To comprehensively assess these compound-event categories, we consider the Regional Climate Model (RCM) simulations from the CORDEX-CORE ensemble, which provides historical simulations and future projections developed on, approximately, a 25km grid for most continental domains worldwide. To reduce the systematic model biases in temperature and precipitation while preserving long-term trends, we apply the ISIMIP bias-adjustment approach (trend-preserving quantile mapping). Results are synthesized over IPCC AR6 reference regions, using CORDEX domains as additional spatial benchmarks.
Future projections are presented for three Global Warming Levels (GWLs): +1.5, +2 and +3 °C relative to pre-industrial conditions. We find an increase in the occurrence of compound events across all categories as warming intensifies, with regionally varying patterns. In addition, the mean number of spells tends to increase with warming, particularly for the hottest categories (very hot–dry and very hot–wet), suggesting that the most extreme compound conditions occur more often in repeated episodes under higher GWLs. These results provide a policy-relevant perspective on how the frequency and persistence of hot–dry and hot–wet compound events might evolve with increasing warming.
This work is part of grant PID2023-149997OA-I00 funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by ERDF/EU.mi
Keywords: compound events, regional climate models, CORDEX, Global Warming Levels, climate change, extreme climate.
How to cite: Fuente-Gonzalez, M., Manzanas, R., Diez-Sierra, J., Chantreux, A., and Casanueva, A.: Climate change and compound events: More frequent hot-dry and hot-wet conditions in a warming world, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-21037, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-21037, 2026.
Ensuring global food security increasingly depends on how the agricultural sector adapts to social and environmental transformations. Historically, rising food demand has been met through technological improvements and expansion of cropland, but climate change is redefining where crops can thrive. Global food production depends on both the amount of land harvested and its productivity. Although climate change has already influenced crop yields, many future projections overlook whether land will remain suitable for cultivation, which risks overestimating available cropland. Our analysis shows that incorporating climate constraints significantly reduces the area of land suitable for cropping. While some high-latitude regions may appear to gain suitability, these benefits largely vanish when soil and terrain limitations are considered, resulting in no net global increase in cultivable land. The reduction in suitable cropland is driven mainly by losses in tropical and subtropical regions, which face growing land scarcity even under sustainable scenarios, and even more so under high-emission pathways. South and Southeast Asia are projected to experience widespread land shortages, while parts of Africa and South America encounter deficits under high-emission pathways, limiting their capacity to meet local food demand. In these areas, yield improvements cannot fully compensate for land shortages, as the required increases exceed biophysical limits. Accounting for these constraints is critical to ensure that future cropland projections remain realistic, as they form the basis for food security planning and Earth system modeling.
How to cite: Biess, B., Gudmundsson, L., Monier, E., Windisch, M. G., Lesk, C. S., and Seneviratne, S. I.: Balancing Future Cropland Demand with Climate-Constrained Land Availability , EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-7305, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-7305, 2026.
As weather and climate hazards intensify due to anthropogenic climate change, the demand for authoritative, science-based, decision-relevant information on future climate risks has never been greater. National Climate Scenarios have emerged in many countries as an central pathway for translating advances in physical climate science into usable information on future weather and climate risks for adaptation planning, risk management, and policy.
Here, I take a conceptual and forward-looking perspective on the role and design of National Climate Scenarios in assessing future weather and climate hazards. Drawing on a comparative review of National Climate Scenarios from ten countries, I outline current practices at the science–policy interface and discuss how these national climate services navigate the tension between scientific credibility, uncertainty, and societal relevance. While the scenario products increasingly incorporate sophisticated climate model information, gaps remain between what users request (particularly regarding extremes and spatial detail) and what the climate science community can robustly deliver.
I highlight four challenges that are highly relevant for the future development of National Climate Scenarios: (i) the co-development of credible and usable products with diverse user communities; (ii) the representation and communication of uncertainty; (iii) the integration of multiple lines of evidence across models, scales, and methods; and (iv) the treatment of extreme events and extreme climate outcomes (low likelihood, high impact). Addressing these challenges requires both continued disciplinary advances in physical climate science, including the modelling and attribution of (unprecedented or compound) weather and climate extremes as well as stronger interdisciplinary collaboration with social sciences, impact modelling, and climate services research.
National Climate Scenarios provide an important reference for climate adaptation and risk assessment, but their value depends on how uncertainty, extremes, and user needs are addressed. This contribution aims to set the stage for discussion and invites the weather and climate hazards community to engage in shaping the next generation of National Climate Scenarios.
How to cite: van der Wiel, K.: Bridging climate science and adaptation: a perspective on the construction of National Climate Scenarios, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-4019, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-4019, 2026.
Posters on site: Mon, 4 May, 10:45–12:30 | Hall X3
Heat waves and flash droughts are becoming more severe due to ongoing climate change. These events are typically associated with the summer season, which in Europe is traditionally defined as a three-month period from June to August. Rising temperatures, however, challenge this conventional definition, as summertime-like temperatures are recorded more often outside this interval. For example, April 2024 as well as the turn of April and May 2025 were marked by unseasonably high temperatures exceeding 30°C in Central and Western Europe. In this study, we employ alternative definitions of the summer season based on the persistence of temperatures above specific thresholds (both absolute and relative) to study shifts in its onset and termination across Europe between the 1961–1990 and 1995–2024 periods. We also investigate differences between two gridded datasets (E-OBS and ERA5) to address uncertainties arising from the data source. Preliminary results indicate prolonged summer seasons across most of Europe, with an opposite tendency found in the British Isles, the Pannonian lowland, and the Black Sea coast. This suggests spatially diverging regional pattern in the summer season prolongation, representing important climate hazard associated with climate change.
How to cite: Kysely, J., Poppova, Z., and Lhotka, O.: Prolonged summer seasons over Europe: a sensitivity study, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-10430, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-10430, 2026.
The Mediterranean region is considered a hotspot of climate change because it is warming faster than the rest of Europe and undergoing more drastic changes in its hydrological cycle. As a result, hydro-meteorological extremes, such as droughts and periods of heavy precipitation, are more frequent and intense compared to other regions. Significant interannual-to-decadal variability in this region is modulated by large-scale atmospheric modes, particularly the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). This study examines the dynamic relationship between different NAO phases and their potential modulation under climate change, as well as the occurrence of extreme events across the Mediterranean, with a particular focus on Greece. For this purpose, we utilised NAO index data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center (CPC), in conjunction with ERA5 atmospheric reanalysis data, Standardised Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) data and Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI) data, to characterise the extremes (droughts, heatwaves, and heavy precipitation). To isolate the evolution of extremes relative to defined NAO+ and NAO- events, we used composite and superposed epoch analysis. The statistical significance of the results was assessed via the Monte Carlo bootstrapping technique. Our preliminary results suggest that the climate change-driven warming trend may alter the amplitude of NAO-related impacts, potentially intensifying the risk of heatwaves during NAO+ summers and amplifying the contrast between the occurrence of droughts and floods.
Keywords: Hydro-meteorological extremes, North Atlantic Oscillation, Climate Change, Mediterranean
Acknowledgements: This work is supported by National Funds by FCT – Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, under the projects UID/04033/2025: Centre for the Research and Technology of Agro-Environmental and Biological Sciences (https://doi.org/10.54499/UID/04033/2025) and LA/P/0126/2020 (https://doi.org/10.54499/LA/P/0126/2020).
How to cite: Andrade, C., Stathopoulos, S., Carvalho, F., and Paschalidou, A. K.: Investigation of the interrelation between climate change, the North Atlantic Oscillation and extreme events in the Mediterranean Region, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-20633, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-20633, 2026.
The objective of this project of the ECMWF is to create an “Operational Extreme Event Monitoring and Attribution Service”, building on established methodologies and previous collaborations, including C3S, EUCLEIA, EUPHEME, and XAIDA. The service is enabled by a flexible, globally applicable framework, based on scientific, operational, and communication expertise. In this study, we apply the different methodologies available in the operational framework and beyond to different climate extremes, to compare attribution across different types of extreme weather events.
The main methodologies in the framework are probabilistic attribution and analogue-based dynamical attribution. We also include storyline-based methods in our comparison, to provide a more comprehensive picture of all key methodologies used by the research community. Each methodology has their unique strengths and may therefore be useful in specific user cases. Furthermore, the advantages and drawbacks of the methods are dependent on the type of extreme weather event considered. For example, extreme rainfall events are relatively short-lived, whereas droughts generally occur for several months. It is therefore crucial to have a comparison of the framework across different types of climate extremes - both univariate and compound (e.g. fire weather). We therefore aim to include a wide range of extreme events, including a heatwave, drought, fire weather, and extreme rainfall event. Similarly, we apply a range of methods including probabilistic attribution, dynamical attribution using analogues, and storyline attribution using nudged climate model simulations from DestinE, and potentially more. By doing so, we provide a coherent case study comparison using the Operational Extreme Event Monitoring and Attribution Service, as part of the C3S project.
How to cite: Happé, T., Thompson, V., Coumou, D., and Scussolini, P.: Operational Extreme Event Monitoring and Attribution Service: a multi-method comparison, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-22929, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-22929, 2026.
Climate change is accelerating the frequency and intensity of climate-induced hazards, generating increasingly complex risks for human societies. Despite rapid growth in related scholarship, the evidence base remains fragmented, geographically uneven, and analytically imbalanced. This systematic review synthesizes peer-reviewed empirical studies published between 2005 and 2025, identified through Web of Science and Scopus using PRISMA-guided screening. Based on 184 eligible articles, we examine publication trends, hazard types, methodological approaches, and documented human impacts to identify dominant patterns, structural gaps, and emerging research priorities.
The review reveals a pronounced surge in publications after 2020, reflecting heightened scientific and policy attention to climate-related disasters. However, empirical research remains heavily concentrated in a small number of countries, particularly the United States and China, while many regions are represented only by isolated case studies. The literature is dominated by hydro-climatic hazards, especially flooding and drought, with growing attention to heat extremes and tropical cyclones. Although multi-hazard perspectives are increasingly adopted, few studies explicitly analyze compound or temporally interacting hazards. Human impacts are most commonly examined in terms of economic, livelihood, and health outcomes, whereas slow-onset environmental degradation and long-term socio-ecological transformations receive comparatively limited attention. Moreover, affected populations are often treated as homogeneous, with limited demographic or intersectional disaggregation.
By consolidating two decades of research, this review highlights the need for geographically diversified and replicable studies, analytical frameworks capable of capturing compound and long-term risks, and equity-centered approaches that foreground social heterogeneity and differential vulnerability. Advancing these priorities is essential for strengthening the scientific foundation of climate risk assessment and informing more inclusive and effective adaptation and resilience strategies.
How to cite: Wu, Z. and Liu, Y.: Climate-Induced Hazards and Human Impacts: A Systematic Review, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-1672, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-1672, 2026.
Droughts have severely impacted France across multiple socio-economic sectors (agriculture, energy, forestry), with climate change projected to aggravate these events. To construct tangible assessments of future drought risks, we develop a comprehensive framework analyzing meteorological, soil moisture, and hydrological droughts across short-term and long-term timescales using standardized drought indices. Our analysis benefits from a recent ensemble of high-resolution hydro-climate simulations (1960-2100) and treats droughts as contiguous spatiotemporal events. To quantify the projected changes, three historical drought events serve as references: 1976, 1989, 2015. We analyze drought evolution by focusing on three spatio-temporal characteristics: duration, spatial extent and intensity. We examine whether these characteristics exhibit significant trends for the RCP8.5 scenario, how their distributions for different global warming levels (+1.5°C, +2°C, +3°C) evolve, and detail the drought evolution in two contrasted hydro-climate simulations (storylines). All drought types present a significant intensity increase under climate change, with current benchmark intensities becoming more frequent even under +1.5°C warming. At +3°C warming, 8-17% of soil moisture and hydrological drought events exceed the exceptional duration of the 1989 event. Notably, even the wettest storyline does not significantly reduce drought intensity, duration, and spatial extent, while the driest one generates unprecedented drought conditions. As a result, adaptation planning should take into account the increased frequency of historical benchmarks, but also drought conditions exceeding them. Our analysis also highlights the sensitivity of future drought projections to how well models represent key driving factors: evolving aerosol concentrations and vegetation physiological responses to increasing CO2.
How to cite: Belin, M., Jézéquel, A., and Ducharne, A.: Exploring Future Spatio-Temporal Drought Characteristics in France under Different Warming Levels, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-7505, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-7505, 2026.
Climate change is driving increased fire weather across the world: hot, dry and windy conditions lead to higher danger of fire ignition and spread and make fire suppression more difficult. With further warming, fire weather is projected to increase across the world. This means today’s children and young people will be exposed to ever more fire weather during their lifetimes. In this study, we analyze projections of extreme fire weather over Portugal and Europe from an ensemble of CMIP6 global climate model simulations previously bias-adjusted and downscaled to a 0.1º spatial resolution using ERA5-Land. We define extreme fire weather as days that exceed the 95th percentile of local fire weather index (FWI) values calculated from a 1985-2014 reference period. We then apply a lifetime exposure methodology at national and sub-national (NUTS3) spatial scales, using spatially explicit data on population density and life expectancy to estimate the exposure of different generations to extreme fire weather under different warming pathways. We use a GMT-based remapping technique and a multi-model ensemble approach to emulate fire weather projections under policy-relevant warming pathways ranging from 1.5ºC to 3.5ºC of warming in 2100.
We find that young people will be disproportionately exposed to extreme fire weather compared to older generations across all warming pathways, while also standing to benefit most from ambitious mitigation. In Portugal, lifetime exposure to extreme fire weather among the youngest cohorts is twice that of their counterparts born in 1950 under current policy projections but is substantially reduced under a 1.5 °C pathway. Similar intergenerational gradients emerge across Europe, with spatial heterogeneity at the national and sub-national level, and the greatest increases in exposure in Mediterranean and Southern Europe and parts of Eastern Europe. When using absolute fire danger thresholds (38 ≤FWI<50 and FWI≥50) instead of relative indicators, similar intergenerational patterns are observed, but with markedly higher exposure in southern European regions characterized by hotter and drier baseline climates. Together, these results demonstrate a pronounced intergenerational inequity in exposure to extreme fire weather, even under low-warming, ambitious mitigation scenarios. At the same time, our results underscore the urgency of ambitious mitigation to limit cumulative exposure for younger generations.
This study also presents a new Python module that can be used to estimate lifetime exposure to any climate hazard, dem4cli. We provide a community tool to flexibly develop lifetime exposure research, laying the basis for further work to evaluate the intergenerational implications of a range of warming pathways and climate-related hazards.
How to cite: Pietroiusti, R., Turco, M., Hetzer, J., Prudencio Montaño, S., Laridon, A., Lejeune, Q., Paprotny, D., and Thiery, W.: Disproportionate lifetime exposure of young people to extreme fire weather in Portugal and Europe, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-14065, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-14065, 2026.
Teleconnections play a fundamental role in shaping global climate variability and the occurrence of extreme events. The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is one of the most influential large-scale modes, with well-documented impacts on the global climate system. Although ENSO exerts only a modest influence on European seasonal climate, previous studies suggest that a link emerges during late winter. This period is of particular relevance for agriculture, as anomalously warm conditions can trigger early crop development and thereby increase vulnerability to subsequent cold extremes such as spring frosts. As warm winters are projected to become more frequent under future climate change, understanding the large-scale drivers of these conditions is increasingly important for mitigating socio-economic impacts on agriculture. While the general relationship between ENSO and European late-winter climate has been widely studied, the specific role of ENSO in triggering anomalous warm conditions that initiate early-season agricultural risk has not yet been systematically assessed. Establishing this statistical linkage will provide valuable insights for impact assessment and could improve the predictability of climate-related risks.
To assess teleconnection interactions, dimension-reduction techniques such as Empirical Orthogonal Functions and Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) are among the most widely used approaches. However, these methods are inherently linear and typically restricted to interactions between two spatial fields, which limits their ability to capture complex nonlinear dependencies. Here, we introduce a novel dimension-reduction framework designed to identify nonlinear interactions among multiple climate variables. The approach integrates kernel generalized CCA with multiple kernel learning and preimages, enabling the extraction of spatially interpretable coupled climate patterns that can serve as a basis for defining teleconnections. By employing an automatic kernel-selection procedure, the framework captures both linear and nonlinear dependencies among the analysed climate variables. We apply this methodology to assess the influence of ENSO on European temperature and water balance anomalies and benchmark the results against a purely linear formulation using the Twentieth Century Reanalysis, version 3 (20CRv3), over the period 1900–2015.
Our results show that the nonlinear framework identifies a substantially larger fraction of Europe being influenced by ENSO than is suggested by linear approaches. The ENSO signal exhibits a pronounced asymmetry across the distributions of temperature and water balance anomalies, with lower and upper extremes responding in different ways. In particular, the upper percentiles of temperature, representing warm and hot extremes over most of Europe, including central Europe, show a clear ENSO-related signal associated with La Niña events that are preceded by El Niño Modoki conditions. The Central European region is of high relevance for agricultural production, suggesting that non-linear ENSO effects may play an important role in shaping early-season climate risk. On the other hand, water balance anomalies primarily respond in the central part of the distribution and are mainly linked to El Niño events. Both signals are significantly weaker or absent in classical linear analyses. Overall, these findings highlight the added value of nonlinear methods for revealing previously hidden teleconnection impacts and point to the benefits for improving climate risk assessment and seasonal prediction.
How to cite: Luther, N., Zorita, E., Luterbacher, J., and Xoplaki, E.: Asymmetric ENSO impacts on European climate extremes identified by a kernel-based framework, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-14612, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-14612, 2026.
Azraq, in eastern Jordan, is a uniquely fragile socio‑ecological system shaped by its arid climate, groundwater‑dependent oasis, and rapidly shifting land‑use patterns. Decades of groundwater over‑abstraction has led to the collapse of the Azraq Oasis in the late 1980s/early 1990s, triggering profound and lasting consequences for local livelihoods of the multi-ethnic communities living there, and leading to pronounced changes in both socioeconomic activities and the demographic composition of the region.
In recent decades, the area has experienced intensifying climate‑related stresses, including droughts, flash floods, and increasingly frequent extreme heat events.
This study investigates the intensifying threat of climate-induced hazards in Azraq, focusing on recent extreme events and multi-decadal future projections. Utilizing high-resolution (10km) regional climate models (RCMs) simulations over the Mashreq domain, we analyze two Shared Socioeconomic Pathways: SSP2-4.5 (moderate emissions) and SSP5-8.5 (high emissions).
Projections for the near future to mid 21st century show a significant increasing trend in the average temperature, and in the frequency of "very hot days" (Tmax > 40°C) particularly under the SSP5-8.5 scenario. While total annual rainfall does not show a clear significant trend, the amount of highest precipitation rain and the rain intensity is projected to increase, highlighting the risk of flash floods. The
The study further explores how these physical hazards intersect with current socioeconomic trends in Azraq and their vulnerability under these extremes. In particular we focus on how past experiences of the local population may shape their resilience strategies and what initiatives can support their adaptation efforts.
How to cite: Jrrar, A., Harahsheh, K., and Stewart, I.: Projecting Climate Hazards in Azraq, Jordan: Multi‑Scenario Changes in Extreme Events and Socioeconomic Vulnerability, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-18597, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-18597, 2026.
Posters virtual: Fri, 8 May, 14:00–18:00 | vPoster spot 3
EGU26-16126 | Posters virtual | VPS14
Estimation of Future 100-year Precipitation in Mie Prefecture, JapanFri, 08 May, 14:24–14:27 (CEST) vPoster spot 3
Probabilistic precipitation, such as the 100-year rainfall, is widely used as the design storm for planning flood control structures. However, due to climate change, the return periods estimated 50 years ago are no longer valid. This shift necessitates a fundamental reconsideration of how we determine design levels for construction. In other words, there is an urgent need for more sophisticated methodologies capable of handling non-stationary precipitation data.
To address these challenges, we present two key topics:
-
In Japan, the national and local governments have issued guidelines suggesting that future extreme rainfall intensities can be estimated by multiplying present-day values by a change factor of 1.1 to 1.15, assuming a 2.0°C increase in global temperature. While these guidelines tend to treat the change factor as largely uniform across regions for practical simplicity, we contend that it should be estimated with greater geographical precision. Consequently, we estimated the change factors specifically for Mie Prefecture in central Japan. Our results demonstrate that even within a single prefecture, the factor varies significantly depending on the specific location.
-
We have been developing a novel approach to estimate future 100-year precipitation levels through multivariate analysis. The details of this methodology and our findings will be presented in our poster session.
How to cite: Kurata, M., Hasegawa, M., Mizuki, C., and Kuzuha, Y.: Estimation of Future 100-year Precipitation in Mie Prefecture, Japan, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-16126, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-16126, 2026.
