Weather and climate extremes, such as recent events unprecedented in the observational record, have extensive impact globally. Some of these events would have been nearly impossible without human-made climate change, exhibiting conditions well beyond previous records due to complex, and at times unprecedented configurations of their underlying physical drivers. Furthermore, compounding hazards and cascading risks resulting from these high-impact extremes are becoming evident. Continued warming does not only increase the frequency and intensity of such extremes, it also potentially increases the risk of unseen non-linear behaviours or unprecedented impacts. To increase preparedness for high-impact climate events, developing novel methods, models and process-understanding that capture these hazards and their associated impacts is paramount.
This session aims to bring together the latest research quantifying and understanding high-impact climate events in past, present and future climates. We welcome studies across all spatial and temporal scales, and covering compound, cascading, and connected extremes as well as worst-case scenarios, with the ultimate goal to provide actionable climate information to increase societal preparedness to such extreme high-impact events.
We invite work addressing high-impact extreme events via, but not limited to, model experiments and intercomparisons, diverse storyline approaches such as event-based or dynamical storylines, climate projections including large ensembles and unseen events, insights from paleo archives, and attribution studies. We also especially welcome contributions focusing on physical understanding of high-impact events, on their ecological and socioeconomic impacts, as well as on approaches to potentially limit societal impacts.
The session is closely linked to the World Climate Research Programme lighthouse activities on Understanding High-Risk Events and Explaining and Predicting Earth System Change.