Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Consistent geographical patterns of changes in high-impact European heatwaves

Abstract

Climate-change projections suggest that European summer heatwaves will become more frequent and severe during this century1,2,3,4, consistent with the observed trend of the past decades5,6. The most severe impacts arise from multi-day heatwaves, associated with warm night-time temperatures and high relative humidity. Here we analyse a set of high-resolution regional climate simulations and show that there is a geographically consistent pattern among climate models: we project the most pronounced changes to occur in southernmost Europe for heatwave frequency and duration, further north for heatwave amplitude and in low-altitude southern European regions for health-related indicators. For the Iberian peninsula and the Mediterranean region, the frequency of heatwave days is projected to increase from an average of about two days per summer for the period 1961–1990 to around 13 days for 2021–2050 and 40 days for 2071–2100. In terms of health impacts, our projections are most severe for low-altitude river basins in southern Europe and for the Mediterranean coasts, affecting many densely populated urban centres. We find that in these locations, the frequency of dangerous heat conditions also increases significantly faster and more strongly, and that the associated geographical pattern is robust across different models and health indicators.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Climate-change scenarios for daily summer temperature statistics.
Figure 2: Heatwave frequency and amplitude.
Figure 3: Increasing health risk.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Schär, C. et al. The role of increasing temperature variability in European summer heatwaves. Nature 427, 332–336 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Meehl, G. A. & Tebaldi, C. More intense, more frequent, and longer lasting heat waves in the 21st century. Science 305, 994–997 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Beniston, M. The 2003 heat wave in Europe: A shape of things to come? An analysis based on Swiss climatological data and model simulations. Geophys. Res. Lett. 31, L02202 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Clark, R. T., Brown, S. J. & Murphy, J. M. Modeling Northern Hemisphere summer heat extreme changes and their uncertainties using a physics ensemble of climate sensitivity experiments. J. Clim. 19, 4418–4435 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Klein, T. A., Können, G. & Selten, F. Signals of anthropogenic influence on European warming as seen in the trend patterns of daily temperature variance. Int. J. Climatol. 25, 1–16 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Della-Marta, P. M. et al. Doubled length of Western European summer heat waves since 1880. J. Geophys. Res. 112, D15103 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Basu, R. & Samet, J. M. Relation between elevated ambient temperature and mortality: A review of the epidemiologic evidence. Epidemiol. Rev. 24, 190–202 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Semenza, J. et al. Heat-related deaths during the July 1995 heat wave in Chicago. N. Engl. J. Med. 335, 84–90 (1996).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Changnon, S. A., Kunkel, K. E. & Reinke, B. C. Impacts and responses to the 1995 heat wave: A call to action. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 77, 1497–1506 (1996).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Hémon, D. et al. Surmortalitée liée à la canicule d’août 2003 en France. Bull. Epidémiol. Hebd. 45–46, 1–5 (2003).

    Google Scholar 

  11. García-Herrera, R., Díaz, J., Trigo, R. M., Luterbacher, J. & Fischer, E. M. A review of the European summer heatwave of 2003. Crit. Rev. Environ. Sci. Technol. 40, 267–306.

  12. Grize, L., Huss, A., Thommen, O., Schindler, C. & Braun-Fahrländer, C. Heat wave 2003 and mortality in Switzerland. Swiss Med. Wkly 135, 200–205 (2005).

    Google Scholar 

  13. Conti, S. et al. Epidemiologic study of mortality during the summer 2003 heat wave in Italy. Environ. Res. 98, 390–399 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Steadman, R. G. The assessment of sultriness. Part I: A temperature-humidity index based on human physiology and clothing science. J. Appl. Meteorol. 18, 861–873 (1979).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Trigo, R. M. et al. Evaluating the impact of extreme temperature based indices in the 2003 heatwave excessive mortality in Portugal. Environ. Sci. Policy 12, 844–854 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Christensen, J. H., Boberg, F., Christensen, O. B. & Lucas-Picher, P. On the need for bias correction of regional climate change projections of temperature and precipitation. Geophys. Res. Lett. 35, L20709 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Giorgi, F., Bi, X. & Pal, J. Mean, interannual variability and trends in a regional climate change experiment over Europe. II: Climate change scenarios (2071–2100). Clim. Dynam. 23, 839–858 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Fischer, E. M. & Schär, C. Future changes in daily summer temperature variability: Driving processes and role for temperature extremes. Clim. Dynam. 33, 917–935 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Haylock, M. R. et al. A European daily high-resolution gridded dataset of surface temperature and precipitation for 1950–2006. J. Geophys. Res. 113, D20119 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Kjellström, E. et al. Modelling daily temperature extremes: Recent climate and future changes over Europe. Clim. Change 81, 249–265 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Seneviratne, S. I., Lüthi, D., Litschi, M. & Schär, C. Land–atmosphere coupling and climate change in Europe. Nature 443, 205–209 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. van Ulden, A., Lenderink, G., van den Hurk, B. & van Meijgaard, E. Circulation statistics and climate change in Central Europe: PRUDENCE simulations and observations. Clim. Change 81, 179–192 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Fischer, E. M., Seneviratne, S. I., Vidale, P. L., Lüthi, D. & Schär, C. Soil moisture–atmosphere interactions during the 2003 European summer heatwave. J. Clim. 20, 5081–5099 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Koffi, B. & Koffi, E. Modelling of heat waves in Europe. Clim. Res. 36, 153–168 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Willett, K. W., Jones, P. D., Gillett, N. P. & Thorne, P. W. Recent changes in surface humidity: Development of the HadCRUH dataset. J. Clim. 21, 5364–5383 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Diffenbaugh, N. S., Pal, J. S., Giorgi, F. & Gao, X. Heat stress intensification in the Mediterranean climate change hotspot. Geophys. Res. Lett. 34, L11706 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Hohenegger, C., Brockhaus, P., Bretherton, C. S. & Schär, C. The soil moisture-precipitation feedback in simulations with explicit and parameterized convection. J. Clim. 22, 5003–5020 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Buser, C. M., Künsch, H. R., Lüthi, D., Wild, M. & Schär, C. Bayesian multi-model projection of climate: Bias assumptions and interannual variability. Clim. Dynam. 33, 849–868 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Delworth, T. L., Mahlman, J. D. & Knutson, T. R. Changes in heat index associated with CO2-induced global warming. Clim. Change 43, 369–386 (1999).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Karl, T. R. & Knight, R. W. The 1995 Chicago heat wave: How likely is a recurrence? Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 78, 1107–1119 (1997).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (NCCR Climate) and by the ENSEMBLES project, funded by the European Commission’s 6th Framework Programme (contract GOCE-CT-2003-505539). Computational resources for the ETH climate simulations have been provided by the Swiss Center for Scientific Computing (CSCS).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

Both authors contributed extensively to the work presented in this letter.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to E. M. Fischer.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Information (PDF 6128 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Fischer, E., Schär, C. Consistent geographical patterns of changes in high-impact European heatwaves. Nature Geosci 3, 398–403 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo866

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo866

This article is cited by

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing