The dynamics of heatwaves, infectious disease outbreak, famine, and wildfires are associated in a complex way with extreme climatic conditions. In the classical view of extremes, when a climatic variable (e.g. temperature or rainfall) exceeds a certain threshold, the system fails and disaster strikes. Under these conditions, the probability of a disaster happening at a certain time is disconnected from the system state, which in turn has no memory of the past climatic forcing. In reality, complex systems dynamically evolve in response to climate, and the state history modulates their response to climatic extremes.
Legacy effects of climate forcing are typical in systems with living organisms. For example, the sustainability of agroecosystems is dependent on water availability which is modulated by climatic and hydrologic variables (e.g. rainfall, temperature, or soil moisture), and the response of these systems to climatic extremes depends on their trajectory of growth. Similarly, the occurrence of wildfires due to heatwaves depends on vegetation density, and in the context of human health, the outbreak of vector-borne diseases after flood/drought events depends on the prior vector population.
The aim of this session is to share and discuss new findings in coupled climatological and ecological dynamical systems with memory in response to extreme climatic events. This session targets a range of hazards across disciplines from hydrology to agriculture, health, and economics, and welcomes theoretical, modeling, and data-driven approaches.