Has Climate Change Affected the Occurrence of Compound Heat Wave and Heavy Rainfall Events in Poland?

The expected future warming in Europe carries major implications for climate and weather extremes, such as more frequent, prolonged, and severe events. The impacts of extreme weather events are often exacerbated, when these events do not occur in isolation, but when two or more extreme events occurr simultaneously or successively. They are called compund extreme events. In the recent decades, an ongoing increase in maximum temperature during summer has been observed in Poland, especially in the central-southern and southeastern areas. This raises the vulnerability of these regions not only to heat waves and drought but also to floods. The potential effect of compound heat waves and extreme rainfall events may be more serious than the effects of these events occurring separately. This research is the first attempt in Poland to investigate whether the presence of a heat wave increases the likelihood of extreme rainfall events, if so, by how much, and whether this changes with warming. For this purpose, we used daily maximum temperature values and 6 h precipitation datasets from 44 meteorological stations in Poland for the 1966–2024 period. Heat waves were identified and the cases of precipitation in a few days just after heat wave were analysed.  It was proven that compound heat wave and extreme rainfall events occurred in Poland with spatially differentiated frequency. They appeared the least frequently on the coast and the most frequently in southwestern, southeastern, and northeastern Poland. The extreme rainfall occurred most often between noon and midnight on the last heat wave day. During these hours, the likelihood of extreme rainfall is, on average, 3.5 times higher than that expected according to climatology norms. With warming, the frequency of days with these compound events increases at the rate of 1.22 days per decade, and the frequency of compound events increases at a rate of 3.75 events per decade. Although a detailed analysis of the mechanisms responsible for such events is planned for further research, the preliminary study revealed that in most cases, the approach of a cold front with a mesoscale thundercloud system was responsible for heat wave termination with extreme rainfall. Since we cannot prevent the growing number of heat waves or heavy precipitation events that terminate the heat wave events in Poland, the adaptation strategy needs to be implemented to meet the sustainable development goals regarding climate actions. This refers primarily to urban planning, agriculture (agroecosystems), social health, and well-being.

This research was funded by the National Science Center (NCN) (grant number 2023/51/B/ST10/01926).