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  • Review Article
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A typology of compound weather and climate events

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 1, pages 333–347 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Compound weather and climate events describe combinations of multiple climate drivers and/or hazards that contribute to societal or environmental risk. Although many climate-related disasters are caused by compound events, the understanding, analysis, quantification and prediction of such events is still in its infancy. In this Review, we propose a typology of compound events and suggest analytical and modelling approaches to aid in their investigation. We organize the highly diverse compound event types according to four themes: preconditioned, where a weather-driven or climate-driven precondition aggravates the impacts of a hazard; multivariate, where multiple drivers and/or hazards lead to an impact; temporally compounding, where a succession of hazards leads to an impact; and spatially compounding, where hazards in multiple connected locations cause an aggregated impact. Through structuring compound events and their respective analysis tools, the typology offers an opportunity for deeper insight into their mechanisms and impacts, benefiting the development of effective adaptation strategies. However, the complex nature of compound events results in some cases inevitably fitting into more than one class, necessitating soft boundaries within the typology. Future work must homogenize the available analytical approaches into a robust toolset for compound-event analysis under present and future climate conditions.

Key points

  • Compound events — a combination of multiple drivers and/or hazards that contribute to societal or environmental risk — are responsible for many of the most severe weather-related and climate-related impacts.

  • A classification of compound events is proposed, distinguishing events that are preconditioned, multivariate, temporally compounding and spatially compounding.

  • The typology aids compound-event analysis by facilitating the selection of appropriate analysis and modelling tools.

  • Through altering the distribution of climate variables and their spatial and temporal dependencies, climate change affects the likelihood, nature and impacts of compound events.

  • Bottom-up approaches, which link sectoral impacts to physical hazards, can help understand and, ultimately, better prepare for emerging risks posed by compound events.

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Fig. 1: Elements of a compound weather and climate event.
Fig. 2: Preconditioned events.
Fig. 3: Multivariate events.
Fig. 4: Temporally compounding events.
Fig. 5: Spatially compounding events.
Fig. 6: Climate-change effects on compound events.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the European COST Action DAMOCLES (CA17109). J.Z. acknowledges financial support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (Ambizione grant 179876). O.M. acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant no. 178751). A portion of C.R.’s work was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. E.B. acknowledges financial support from the European Research Council grant ACRCC (project 339390). A.M.R. was supported by the Scientific Employment Stimulus 2017 from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal (FCT, CEECIND/00027/2017). N.N.R. was funded by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (CE170100023). This work contributes to the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Grand Challenge on Weather and Climate Extremes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Jakob Zscheischler & Olivia Martius

  2. Climate and Environmental Physics, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Jakob Zscheischler

  3. Institute of Geography, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Olivia Martius

  4. Mobiliar Lab for Natural Risks, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Olivia Martius

  5. School of Civil, Environmental & Mining Engineering, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

    Seth Westra

  6. Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Reading, UK

    Emanuele Bevacqua

  7. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Colin Raymond

  8. Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Colin Raymond

  9. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, NY, USA

    Radley M. Horton

  10. Deltares, Delft, Netherlands

    Bart van den Hurk

  11. Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Bart van den Hurk

  12. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

    Amir AghaKouchak

  13. Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

    Amir AghaKouchak

  14. École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, Champs sur Marne, France

    Aglaé Jézéquel

  15. LMD/IPSL, École Normale Supérieure, PSL Université Paris, Paris, France

    Aglaé Jézéquel

  16. Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany

    Miguel D. Mahecha

  17. Remote Sensing Centre for Earth System Research, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany

    Miguel D. Mahecha

  18. Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change, University of Graz, Graz, Austria

    Douglas Maraun

  19. Instituto Dom Luiz, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

    Alexandre M. Ramos

  20. ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

    Nina N. Ridder

  21. Department of Hydrology and Hydraulic Engineering, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

    Wim Thiery

  22. Research Center for Statistics, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Edoardo Vignotto

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  1. Jakob Zscheischler
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Contributions

J.Z., O.M. and A.M.R. drafted the first ideas of the classification. J.Z. and O.M. conceived the main structure, created Figs 1–5 and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. J.Z. created Fig. 6. J.Z. and S.W. wrote the ‘Methods for compound-event analysis’ section, with substantial input from E.B., A.J., D.M. and E.V. All authors made substantial contributions to the discussion of content.

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Correspondence to Jakob Zscheischler.

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Nature Reviews Earth & Environment thanks Ali Sarhadi, Pradeep Mujumdar, Aloïs Tilloy and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Zscheischler, J., Martius, O., Westra, S. et al. A typology of compound weather and climate events. Nat Rev Earth Environ 1, 333–347 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-020-0060-z

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