Guidelines for Studying Diverse Types of Compound Weather and Climate Events

Abstract

Compound weather and climate events are combinations of climate drivers and/or hazards that contribute to societal or environmental risk. Studying compound events often requires a multidisciplinary approach combining domain knowledge of the underlying processes with, for example, statistical methods and climate model outputs. Recently, to aid the development of research on compound events, four compound event types were introduced, namely (a) preconditioned, (b) multivariate, (c) temporally compounding, and (d) spatially compounding events. However, guidelines on how to study these types of events are still lacking. Here, we consider four case studies, each associated with a specific event type and a research question, to illustrate how the key elements of compound events (e.g., analytical tools and relevant physical effects) can be identified. These case studies show that (a) impacts on crops from hot and dry summers can be exacerbated by preconditioning effects of dry and bright springs. (b) Assessing compound coastal flooding in Perth (Australia) requires considering the dynamics of a non-stationary multivariate process. For instance, future mean sea-level rise will lead to the emergence of concurrent coastal and fluvial extremes, enhancing compound flooding risk. (c) In Portugal, deep-landslides are often caused by temporal clusters of moderate precipitation events. Finally, (d) crop yield failures in France and Germany are strongly correlated, threatening European food security through spatially compounding effects. These analyses allow for identifying general recommendations for studying compound events. Overall, our insights can serve as a blueprint for compound event analysis across disciplines and sectors.

Plain Language Summary: Many societal and environmental impacts from events such as droughts and storms arise from a combination of weather and climate factors referred to as a compound event. Considering the complex nature of these high-impact events is crucial for an accurate assessment of climate-related risk, for example to develop adaptation and emergency preparedness strategies. However, compound event research has emerged only recently, therefore our ability to analyze these events is still limited. In practice, studying compound events is a challenging task, which often requires interaction between experts across multiple disciplines. Recently, compound events were divided into four types to aid the framing of research on this topic, but guidelines on how to study these four types are missing. Here, we take a pragmatic approach and—focusing on case studies of different compound event types—illustrate how to address specific research questions that could be of interest to users. The results allow identifying recommendations for compound event analyses. Furthermore, through the case studies, we highlight the relevance that compounding effects have for the occurrence of landslides, flooding, vegetation impacts, and crop failures. The guidelines emerged from this work will assist the development of compound event analysis across disciplines and sectors.