Abstract
The frequency and intensity of heat waves in the United States is projected to increase in the 21st century. We investigate dry and humid heat waves in a pair of high-resolution model simulations that constrain large-scale atmospheric circulation, to isolate the thermodynamic impacts on characteristics of present and future heat waves over the United States. The two kinds of heat waves show differences in mean intensity, amplitude, duration, and frequency over the Southeast, Northeast, and Midwest, while their characteristics are largely similar in the drier central and western United States. In a warmer climate, relative humidity is projected to decrease during dry heat waves, whereas it remains unchanged during humid heat waves. However, the overall increase in daily maximum temperature intensifies the heat stress during future humid and dry heat waves across all regions. With large-scale circulation constrained, these simulations emphasize the importance of thermodynamic drivers in determining future heat wave characteristics.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e2019GL086736 |
| Journal | Geophysical Research Letters |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 16 2020 |
Funding
This study is partly supported by the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM), funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) and by Advance Study Program fellowship awarded by Graduate Visitor Program at National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). F. L. is supported by NSF AGS‐0856145, Amendment 87 and the Regional and Global Model Analysis (RGMA) component of the Earth and Environmental System Modeling Program of the U.S. DOE's Office of BER via NSF IA 1947282. Support for data storage and analysis is provided by Computational Information Systems Laboratory at NCAR. Data used in this study can be accessed by contacting the lead authors of Liu et al. ( 2017 ). This manuscript has been authored by employees of UT‐Battelle, LLC, under Contract DEAC05‐00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Accordingly, the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the U.S. government retains a nonexclusive, paid‐up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for U.S. government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doepublicaccess‐plan ). This study is partly supported by the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM), funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) and by Advance Study Program fellowship awarded by Graduate Visitor Program at National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). F.?L. is supported by NSF AGS-0856145, Amendment 87 and the Regional and Global Model Analysis (RGMA) component of the Earth and Environmental System Modeling Program of the U.S. DOE's Office of BER via NSF IA 1947282. Support for data storage and analysis is provided by Computational Information Systems Laboratory at NCAR. Data used in this study can be accessed by contacting the lead authors of Liu et al.?(2017). This manuscript has been authored by employees of UT-Battelle, LLC, under Contract DEAC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Accordingly, the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the U.S. government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for U.S. government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doepublicaccess-plan).