Anthropogenic climate change exacerbates the risk of successive flood-heat extremes: Multi-model global projections...

The successive flood-heat extreme (SFHE) event, which threatens the securities of human health, economy, and building environment, has attracted extensive research attention recently. However, the potential changes in SFHE characteristics and the global population exposure to SFHE under anthropogenic warming remain unclear. Here, we present a global-scale evaluation of the projected changes and uncertainties in SFHE characteristics (frequency, intensity, duration, land exposure) and population exposure under the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 2.6 and 6.0 scenarios, based on the multi-model ensembles (five global water models forced by four global climate models) within the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project 2b framework. The results reveal that, relative to the 1970-1999 baseline period, the SFHE frequency is projected to increase nearly globally by the end of this century, especially in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (>20 events/30-year) and the tropical regions (e.g., northern South America, central Africa, and southeastern Asia, >15 events/30-year). The projected higher SFHE frequency is generally accompanied by a larger model uncertainty. By the end of this century, the SFHE land exposure is expected to increase by 12 % (20 %) under RCP2.6 (RCP6.0), and the intervals between flood and heatwave in SFHE tend to decrease by up to 3 days under both RCPs, implying the more intermittent SFHE occurrence under future warming. The SFHE events will lead to the higher population exposure in the Indian Peninsula and central Africa (<10 million person-days) and eastern Asia (<5 million person-days) due to the higher population density and the longer SFHE duration. Partial correlation analysis indicates that the contribution of flood to the SFHE frequency is greater than that of heatwave for most global regions, but the SFHE frequency is dominated by the heatwave in northern North America and northern Asia.