Evidence for preferred propagating terrestrial heatwave pathways due to Rossby wave activity

Mingzhao Wang, Yu Huang (), Christian L. E. Franzke, Naiming Yuan (), Zuntao Fu () and Niklas Boers
Additional contact information
Mingzhao Wang: Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, School of Physics, Peking University
Yu Huang: School of Engineering and Design, Technical University of Munich
Christian L. E. Franzke: Institute for Basic Science
Naiming Yuan: Sun Yat-sen University
Zuntao Fu: Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, School of Physics, Peking University
Niklas Boers: School of Engineering and Design, Technical University of Munich

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Terrestrial heatwaves are prolonged hot weather events often resulting in widespread socioeconomic impacts. Predicting heatwaves remains challenging, partly due to limited understanding of the events’ spatial evolution and underlying mechanisms. Heatwaves were mainly examined at fixed stations, with little attention given to the fact that the center of a heatwave can move a long distance. Here, we examine the spatial propagation of terrestrial heatwaves using a complex network algorithm, and find four preferred propagation pathways of terrestrial heatwaves in the northern hemisphere. Along each preferred pathway, heatwaves evolve in two ways: propagating along the pathway or being stationary. We show that the propagating heatwave pathways are consistent with the movement of Rossby wave trains, and that both are guided by enhanced Rossby wave flux activities. The detected propagation pathways are found to provide prior knowledge for occurrences of downstream heatwaves that can be used for identifying associated precursor signals. The results shed light on the mechanisms responsible for preferred propagating heatwave pathways and provide potential predictability of terrestrial heatwaves.

Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-60104-w 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:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-60104-w

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

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-60104-w

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 ().