DOE OSTI · 2864960
Weather and climate extremes in a changing Arctic
Abstract
Weather and climate extremes are increasingly occurring in the Arctic. Here, in this Review, we evaluate historical and projected changes in rare Arctic extremes across the atmosphere, cryosphere and ocean and elucidate their driving mechanisms. Clear shifts occur in mean and extreme distributions after ~2000. For instance, pre-2000 to post-2000 observational probabilities of 1.5 standard deviation events increase by 20% for atmospheric heat waves, 76.7% for Atlantic layer warm events, 83.5% for Arctic sea ice loss and 62.9% for Greenland Ice Sheet melt extent — in many cases, low probability, rare extreme events in the early period become the norm in the latter period. These observed changes can be explained using a ‘pushing and triggering’ concept, representing interplay between external forcing and internal variability: long-term warming destabilizes the climate system and ‘pushes’ it to a new state, allowing subsequent variability associated with large-scale atmosphere–ocean–ice interactions and synoptic systems to ‘trigger’ extreme events over different timescales. Ongoing anthropogenic warming is expected to further increase the frequency and magnitude of extremes, such that simulated probabilities of 1.5 standard deviation events increase by 72.6% for atmospheric heat waves, 68.7% for Atlantic layer warm events and 93.3% for Greenland Ice Sheet melt rate between historic (1984–2014) and future (2069–2099) periods under a very high emission scenario. Future research should prioritize the development of physically based metrics, enhance high-resolution observation and modelling capabilities and improve understanding of multiscale Arctic climate drivers.
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Zhang, Xiangdong [North Carolina State Univ., Asheville, NC (United States); North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC (United States)] (ORCID:0000000158932888), Vihma, Timo [Finnish Meteorological Inst., Helsinki (Finland)] (ORCID:0000000265577084), Rinke, Annette [Alfred Wegener Inst. for Polar and Marine Research, Potsdam (Germany)] (ORCID:0000000266859219), Moore, G. W. K. [Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada)] (ORCID:0000000239865605), Tang, Han [North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC (United States)], Äijälä, Cecilia [Univ. of Helsinki (Finland)] (ORCID:0000000332530578), DuVivier, Alice [National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, CO (United States)], Huang, Jianbin [University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (China)], Landrum, Laura [National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, CO (United States)] (ORCID:0000000260031146), Li, Chao [East China Normal Univ. (ECNU), Shanghai (China)] (ORCID:0000000168639271), Zhang, Jing [North Carolina A & T State Univ., Greensboro, NC (United States)] (ORCID:0000000175301121), Boisvert, Linette [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)], Cheng, Bin [Finnish Meteorological Inst., Helsinki (Finland)] (ORCID:0000000181568412), Cohen, Judah [Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States); Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc., Lexington, MA (United States)] (ORCID:0000000277624482), Handorf, Dörthe [Alfred Wegener Inst. for Polar and Marine Research, Potsdam (Germany)] (ORCID:0000000233056882), Hanna, Edward [Univ. of Lincoln (United Kingdom)] (ORCID:000000028683182X), Hartmuth, Katharina [Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule (ETH), Zurich (Switzerland)], Jonassen, Marius O. [Univ. Centre in Svalbard (Norway)] (ORCID:0000000247459009), Luo, Yong [Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China)], Murto, Sonja [Stockholm Univ. (Sweden); Uppsala Univ. (Sweden)], Overland, James E. [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Seattle, WA (United States). Pacific Marine Environmental Lab. (PMEL)] (ORCID:0000000220128832), Parker, Chelsea [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States); Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)] (ORCID:0000000180266957), Perrie, William [Bedford Inst. of Oceanography (Canada)] (ORCID:0000000235982791), Schulz, Kirstin [Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States)] (ORCID:000000018404944X), Schweiger, Axel [Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)] (ORCID:0000000287044123), Spengler, Thomas [Univ. of Bergen (Norway); Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research (Norway)] (ORCID:0000000217476385), Steele, Michael [Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)], Tung, Wen-wen [Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN (United States)] (ORCID:0000000186271503), Tyrrell, Nicholas [Finnish Meteorological Inst., Helsinki (Finland); Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne, VIC (Australia)], Valkonen, Elina [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States); Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)], Wang, Hailong [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)] (ORCID:0000000219944402), Wang, Zhuo [Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States)], Weijer, Wilbert [Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK (United States)], Wickström, Siiri [University Centre in Svalbard (Norway)], Wu, Yutian [Columbia Univ., Palisades, NY (United States). Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory] (ORCID:0000000244286624), Zhang, Minghong [Dalhousie Univ., Halifax, NS (Canada)]. 2025-10-21. Weather and climate extremes in a changing Arctic. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-025-00724-4
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