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Autopsy of two mega-heatwaves

Record-breaking heatwaves in 2003 and 2010 surprised both the public and experts. Observations provide new insights into how temperatures escalated to unprecedented values through the interaction of boundary-layer dynamics and land surface drying.

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Figure 1: Warmer summers and hotter extremes in a 2 °C warmer world.

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Correspondence to Erich M. Fischer.

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Fischer, E. Autopsy of two mega-heatwaves. Nature Geosci 7, 332–333 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2148

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