Zantout et al. (2025) Shifting dominant periods in extreme climate impacts under global warming

Identification

• Journal: Nature Communications
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-11-05
• Authors: Karim Zantout, Juraj Balkovič, Maik Billing, Christian Folberth, Simon N. Gosling, Tobias Hank, Stijn Hantson, Toshichika Iizumi, Akihiko Ito, Jonas Jägermeyr, Atul K. Jain, Nikolay Khabarov, Sian Kou‐Giesbrecht, Fang Li, Mengxue Li, Tzu‐Shun Lin, Wenfeng Liu, Christoph Müller, Masashi Okada, Sebastian Ostberg, Kedar Otta, Sam S. Rabin, Christopher Reyer, Clemens Scheer, Julia M. Schneider, Florian Zabel, Katja Frieler, Jacob Schewe
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-65600-7

Research Groups

• Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany
• International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria
• University of Nottingham, UK
• Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany
• National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO), Japan
• The University of Tokyo, Japan
• Columbia University / NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, USA
• University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA
• Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
• China Agricultural University, Beijing, China
• NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research, USA
• National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan
• Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany
• University of Basel, Switzerland

Short Summary

This study investigates how the regularity patterns (dominant periods) of extreme climate impacts (crop failure, heatwaves, wildfires) change under global warming. It finds that natural regularity, linked to climate oscillations, is increasingly replaced by monotonic growth and a shift towards shorter dominant periods in the Anthropocene, reducing predictability.

Objective

• To investigate whether extreme climate events occur regularly and how these regularity patterns change under global warming.
• To determine if extreme event variability can be described by a single dominant period and how this period evolves under climate change for crop failures, heatwaves, and wildfires.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Global, gridded at 0.5° latitude by 0.5° longitude resolution.
• Temporal Scale: 1850–2100, analyzed in moving 50-year windows (e.g., 1850–1899, 1950–1999, 2040–2069) and 30-year windows for strong warming scenarios.

Methodology and Data

• Models used:
  • Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP) phase 3b framework.
  • Global Climate Models (GCMs) from CMIP6 (GFDL-ESM4, UKESM1-0-LL, IPSL-CM6A-LR, MPI-ESM1-2-HR, MRI-ESM2-0).
  • Global Gridded Crop Models (GGCMs): CROVER, CYGMA1p74, EPIC-IIASA, ISAM, LDNDC, LPJmL, PEPIC, PROMET.
  • Global Terrestrial Biosphere Models: CLASSIC, LPJmL-5-7-10-fire, VISIT.
  • Heatwave Magnitude Index daily (HWMId).
  • Fourier analysis combined with statistical tools (adjusted coefficient of determination R² > 50%, red noise significance test at 95%).
• Data sources:
  • Bias-adjusted daily output of GCMs.
  • Process-based crop and vegetation model simulation results from ISIMIP 3b.
  • Historical (1850–2014) and future (2015–2100) Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSP1–2.6, SSP3–7.0, SSP5–8.5) scenarios.
  • Pre-industrial control (picontrol) simulation (1850–2100).
  • Socio-economic conditions fixed at 2015 levels.
  • Extreme events defined by the 2.5th percentile (crop failure yield) or 97.5th percentile (heatwave HWMId, wildfire burnt area) of the respective picontrol distribution.

Main Results

• Under pre-industrial conditions, dominant periods of 7–13 years emerge in 28% of cropland exposed to crop failure and 10% of wildfire-affected areas, likely related to climatic oscillations (e.g., ENSO, IOD, NAO). Heatwaves occur irregularly (less than 1% regularity).
• During the 1950–1999 transition period, the number of dominant periods increases by 2% for crop failure, 11% for heatwaves, and 13% for wildfires, attributed to higher event probabilities due to global warming.
• In the Anthropocene (e.g., 2040–2069 under SSP5-8.5), the occurrence of extreme events shifts towards monotonic growth, replacing previous natural regularity patterns.
• Linearly detrended projections for 2040–2069 reveal an additional shift towards smaller dominant periods (1–4 years) for all event types, consistent with increasing ENSO intensity, and an increase in irregularity for crop failure and heatwaves.
• Wildfire regularity patterns are found to be more robust to global warming compared to crop failures and heatwaves, likely due to vegetation regrowth buffering effects.

Contributions

• Provides the first comprehensive analysis of how dominant periods in extreme climate impacts (crop failure, heatwaves, wildfires) shift under global warming.
• Demonstrates that natural regularity patterns, previously linked to climate oscillations, are largely overshadowed by anthropogenic warming trends and shift towards higher frequencies, implying reduced predictability of extreme events.
• Introduces a robust methodology combining Fourier analysis with statistical tests to identify significant dominant periods in noisy, multi-model extreme event time series.
• Offers crucial insights for climate adaptation planning, resource allocation, insurance, and disaster preparedness by highlighting the changing temporal dynamics and predictability of extreme climate impacts.

Funding

• European Union Horizon 2020 programme (HABITABLE project, Grant 869395)
• German Federal Foreign Office (PREVIEW project, Grant no. AA38220002)
• JSPS KAKENHI (Grant No. 21H05318)
• National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFE0106500)
• National Key Scientific and Technological Infrastructure project “Earth System Science Numerical Simulator Facility” (EarthLab)
• European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (FirEUrisk project, Grant no. 101003890)
• Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (JPMEERF20S11805 and JPMEERF20242001) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan
• Conservation International Foundation (grant no. CI-114129)
• Austrian Science Fund (FWF) (grant no. 10.55776/P36220)
• Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s Discovery Grant Program (RGPIN-2024-04188)
• Helmholtz Association Impulse and Networking fund
• Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (JPMEERF23S21120) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency Provided by the Ministry of the Environment
• National Natural Science Foundation of China (32361143871 and 52411540183)

Citation

@article{Zantout2025Shifting,
  author = {Zantout, Karim and Balkovič, Juraj and Billing, Maik and Folberth, Christian and Gosling, Simon N. and Hank, Tobias and Hantson, Stijn and Iizumi, Toshichika and Ito, Akihiko and Jägermeyr, Jonas and Jain, Atul K. and Khabarov, Nikolay and Kou‐Giesbrecht, Sian and Li, Fang and Li, Mengxue and Lin, Tzu‐Shun and Liu, Wenfeng and Müller, Christoph and Okada, Masashi and Ostberg, Sebastian and Otta, Kedar and Rabin, Sam S. and Reyer, Christopher and Scheer, Clemens and Schneider, Julia M. and Zabel, Florian and Frieler, Katja and Schewe, Jacob},
  title = {Shifting dominant periods in extreme climate impacts under global warming},
  journal = {Nature Communications},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1038/s41467-025-65600-7},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-65600-7}
}