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Asymmetric European summer heat predictability from wet and dry southern winters and springs

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Abstract

The mega heatwaves that struck western Europe in 2003 (ref. 1) and Russia in 2010 (ref. 2) are thought to provide a foretaste of future European summer climate3,4,5,6,7. Our ability to anticipate such events remains poor8, limiting adequate society adaptation. A deficit of precipitation in the preceding months favours summer heatwaves9,10,11,12,13, but the potential predictability from spring surface-moisture deficits, addressed in only a few case studies8,14,15, largely remains to be investigated. By analysing 64 years of observed temperature and precipitation we show that rainy winter/spring seasons over southern Europe inhibit hot summer days whereas dry seasons are followed by either a high or a low frequency of hot days, generalizing findings obtained over southeastern Europe10. Observations indicate that summer heat is more sensitive to the occurrence of specific weather regimes in initially dry cases than wet cases, inducing this asymmetry in summer heat predictability. Then, simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (ref. 16 and J-L., Dufresne, manuscript in preparation) indicate that projected drier conditions over southern Europe are likely to induce a widening in the frequency distribution of hot summer days, as the wet winter/spring seasons are likely to become rare. These mechanisms are found to play an increasingly important role in coming decades, with more hot extremes and a modified hot-day predictability.

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Figure 1: Asymmetric predictability of summer hot days from preceding winter/spring rainfall frequency.
Figure 2: Sensitivity of summer hot days to summer weather regimes frequency.
Figure 3: Asymmetric predictability diagnosed in global coupled models.
Figure 4: Future projection differences between selected best models and all models.

Change history

  • 04 September 2012

    In the version of this Letter originally published, there were found to be errors in the program that reads the longitudes of European Climate Assessment and Dataset (ECA&D) observation stations and calculates averages of data obtained from them. In this program, longitudes for selected stations in each 5°x5° area were interpreted as characters and not numbers, and negative longitudes were inaccurately read. This had the overall effect of calculating averages of rainfall and frequencies of hot days (FRR(JFMAM) and FT(JJA), respectively) with wrong station weights, inducing too much emphasis on western stations. The errors have now been corrected in the program and the data reprocessed. The main conclusions of the Letter are not changed, but there are several changes in Figs 1, 2 and related text, and Supplementary Fig. S2, Tables S1, S3. All the errors have now been corrected in the Letter.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to the engineer team of the Institut Pierre–Simon Laplace (IPSL) Climate Modelling Centre for having carried out and provided the simulations made in the framework of the CMIP5 project. In particular M-A. Foujols provided priority access to the latest IPSL-CM5A-MR simulations. The authors also benefitted from discussions with P. Braconnot, J. Cattiaux, F. D’Andrea and H. Douville.

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Authors and Affiliations

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Contributions

B.Q. and R.V. designed the experiments and B.Q. carried out the observational and model statistical analyses. P.Y. advised the team and carried out the weather regime analysis. M.H. helped with the computation of additional rainfall indices. M.H. and S.I.S. helped to provide essential interpretations of the results. All authors contributed to the writing and correcting of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Benjamin Quesada.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Quesada, B., Vautard, R., Yiou, P. et al. Asymmetric European summer heat predictability from wet and dry southern winters and springs. Nature Clim Change 2, 736–741 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1536

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