Compound climate extremes such as droughts and heat waves increase the risk of devastating forest fires, as has recently been the case in Portugal. (Photo: Tatiana Bulyonkova / flickr.com)
In the past, climate scientists have tended to underestimate the risk of a co-occurrence of heatwave and drought. This is the conclusion of one of the first studies to examine compound climate extremes. A combination of severe drought and a heatwave caused problems for Russia in the summer of 2010: fires tore through forests and peat bogs. Moscow was shrouded in thick smog, causing many deaths in the local population. At the same time, Pakistan was engulfed in heavy rain, as the high-pressure area over Russia blocked a low-pressure zone over Pakistan. This led to the country's worst flooding for centuries. According to the statistics, however, such extreme climate events, similar to the heatwave that affected large areas of western and central Europe in the summer of 2003, are only supposed to occur around every 100 years.
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