Recent decades have seen widespread increases in daily minimum temperatures across regions and seasons, with many projections showing that minimum temperatures will continue to increase at a faster rate than daily maxima in many regions. But low temperatures and cold extremes remain a significant source of environmental and societal risk. Cold spells, frost events, and cold-air outbreaks continue to affect human health, agriculture, transportation, energy systems, ecosystems, and infrastructure. Although the frequency and intensity of cold extremes are expected to decrease in a warming climate, such events may still produce substantial impacts, especially as natural and human systems have already started adapting to warmer conditions. Furthermore, important questions remain regarding the physical drivers, predictability, attribution, future evolution, and impacts of cold extremes and cold temperature-related phenomena across different temporal and spatial scales. This session aims to bring together researchers from various disciplines, including climatology, meteorology, hydrology, ecology, biometeorology and impact-focused disciplines, to advance our understanding of cold extremes and their role in the changing climate. We welcome contributions addressing observational, modelling, mechanism, and impact-based perspectives on cold temperatures and cold extremes.
We invite contributions related to:
- Past and future trends and variability in cold extremes at global, regional, and local scales
- Changes in frost occurrence, duration, timing, and seasonality
- Cold-air outbreaks, cold spells, and extreme cold weather events
- Physical drivers of cold extremes, including atmospheric circulation, Rossby wave breaking, blocking, jet-stream variability, stratosphere-troposphere coupling, and teleconnections
- Compound and cascading cold-related events (e.g., cold and snow, cold and wind, cold and energy-system stress)
- Attribution of cold extremes and assessment of underlying drivers
- Representation of cold extremes in numerical models
- Ecological and environmental impacts of cold temperatures, frost damage, and winter stress
- Impacts on agriculture, forestry, water resources, transportation, infrastructure, and energy systems
- Human health impacts and societal vulnerability to cold extremes
- Adaptation, resilience, and risk management in a changing climate
- Paleoclimate and future long-term perspectives on cold extremes and cold-related events