Warming of hot extremes alleviated by expanding irrigation

Wim Thiery*, Auke J. Visser, Erich M. Fischer, Mathias Hauser, Annette L. Hirsch, David M. Lawrence, Quentin Lejeune, Edouard L. Davin, Sonia I. Seneviratne

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

136 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Irrigation affects climate conditions – and especially hot extremes – in various regions across the globe. Yet how these climatic effects compare to other anthropogenic forcings is largely unknown. Here we provide observational and model evidence that expanding irrigation has dampened historical anthropogenic warming during hot days, with particularly strong effects over South Asia. We show that irrigation expansion can explain the negative correlation between global observed changes in daytime summer temperatures and present-day irrigation extent. While global warming increases the likelihood of hot extremes almost globally, irrigation can regionally cancel or even reverse the effects of all other forcings combined. Around one billion people (0.79–1.29) currently benefit from this dampened increase in hot extremes because irrigation massively expanded throughout the 20t h century. Our results therefore highlight that irrigation substantially reduced human exposure to warming of hot extremes but question whether this benefit will continue towards the future.

Original languageEnglish
Article number290
JournalNature Communications
Volume11
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Jan 2020

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