Simulating the Western North America heatwave of 2021 with analogue importance sampling

Abstract

During the summer of 2021, the North American Pacific Northwest was affected by an extreme heatwave that broke previous temperature records by several degrees. The event caused severe impacts on human life and ecosystems, and was associated with the superposition of concurrent drivers, whose effects were amplified by climate change. We evaluate whether this record-breaking heatwave could have been foreseen prior to its observation, and how climate change affects North American Pacific Northwest worst-case heatwave scenarios. To this purpose, we use a stochastic weather generator with empirical importance sampling. The generator simulates extreme temperature sequences using circulation analogues, chosen with an importance sampling based on the daily maximum temperature over the region that recorded the most extreme impacts. We show how some of the large-scale drivers of the event can be obtained form the circulation analogues, even if such information is not directly given to the stochastic weather generator.