State-of-the-art global models underestimate impacts from climate extremes

Jacob Schewe (), Simon N. Gosling, Christopher Reyer, Fang Zhao, Philippe Ciais, Joshua Elliott, Louis Francois, Veronika Huber, Heike K. Lotze, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Michelle T. H. van Vliet, Robert Vautard, Yoshihide Wada, Lutz Breuer, Matthias Büchner, David A. Carozza, Jinfeng Chang, Marta Coll, Delphine Deryng, Allard Wit, Tyler D. Eddy, Christian Folberth, Katja Frieler, Andrew D. Friend, Dieter Gerten, Lukas Gudmundsson, Naota Hanasaki, Akihiko Ito, Nikolay Khabarov, Hyungjun Kim, Peter Lawrence, Catherine Morfopoulos, Christoph Müller, Hannes Müller Schmied, René Orth, Sebastian Ostberg, Yadu Pokhrel, Thomas A. M. Pugh, Gen Sakurai, Yusuke Satoh, Erwin Schmid, Tobias Stacke, Jeroen Steenbeek, Jörg Steinkamp, Qiuhong Tang, Hanqin Tian, Derek P. Tittensor, Jan Volkholz, Xuhui Wang and Lila Warszawski
Additional contact information
Jacob Schewe: Member of the Leibniz Association
Simon N. Gosling: University of Nottingham
Christopher Reyer: Member of the Leibniz Association
Fang Zhao: East China Normal University
Philippe Ciais: Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ
Joshua Elliott: University of Chicago and ANL Computation Institute, 5735S. Ellis Ave
Louis Francois: Université de Liège
Veronika Huber: Ctra. de Utrera 1
Heike K. Lotze: Dalhousie University
Sonia I. Seneviratne: Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science
Michelle T. H. van Vliet: Wageningen University
Robert Vautard: Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ
Yoshihide Wada: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Lutz Breuer: Justus Liebig University Giessen
Matthias Büchner: Member of the Leibniz Association
David A. Carozza: McGill University
Jinfeng Chang: Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ
Marta Coll: Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM - CSIC)
Delphine Deryng: Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF)
Allard Wit: Wageningen Environmental Research
Tyler D. Eddy: Dalhousie University
Christian Folberth: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Katja Frieler: Member of the Leibniz Association
Andrew D. Friend: University of Cambridge
Dieter Gerten: Member of the Leibniz Association
Lukas Gudmundsson: Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science
Naota Hanasaki: National Institute for Environmental Studies
Akihiko Ito: National Institute for Environmental Studies
Nikolay Khabarov: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Hyungjun Kim: the University of Tokyo
Peter Lawrence: Terrestrial Science Section, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Catherine Morfopoulos: Imperial College of London, Department of Life Science
Christoph Müller: Member of the Leibniz Association
Hannes Müller Schmied: Goethe-University Frankfurt
René Orth: Stockholm University
Sebastian Ostberg: Member of the Leibniz Association
Yadu Pokhrel: Michigan State University
Thomas A. M. Pugh: University of Birmingham
Gen Sakurai: National Agriculture and Food Research Organization
Yusuke Satoh: Wageningen University
Erwin Schmid: University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna
Tobias Stacke: Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
Jeroen Steenbeek: Ecopath International Initiative
Jörg Steinkamp: Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (SBiK-F)
Qiuhong Tang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Hanqin Tian: Auburn University
Derek P. Tittensor: Dalhousie University
Jan Volkholz: Member of the Leibniz Association
Xuhui Wang: Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ
Lila Warszawski: Member of the Leibniz Association

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Abstract Global impact models represent process-level understanding of how natural and human systems may be affected by climate change. Their projections are used in integrated assessments of climate change. Here we test, for the first time, systematically across many important systems, how well such impact models capture the impacts of extreme climate conditions. Using the 2003 European heat wave and drought as a historical analogue for comparable events in the future, we find that a majority of models underestimate the extremeness of impacts in important sectors such as agriculture, terrestrial ecosystems, and heat-related human mortality, while impacts on water resources and hydropower are overestimated in some river basins; and the spread across models is often large. This has important implications for economic assessments of climate change impacts that rely on these models. It also means that societal risks from future extreme events may be greater than previously thought.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08745-6 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-08745-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-08745-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().