Heat extremes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Chair: Costas Papanicolas Speaker: Panos Hadjinicolaou PHOEBE 1

Observed global warming > 0.7 degrees Celsius Persistent “Unprecedented” https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/~timo/diag/tempdiag.htm

MENA: Middle Eastern and Maghreb countries (“Greater Middle East”) Mediterranean

20th century observed warming Strong (~0.5o ) Fast (within 20 years) Widespread (in all sub-domains) Tanarhte et al., J. Geophys. Res., 2012

21st century IPCC summer temperature 4o-6oC by 2100 with business as usual scenario RCP8.5 > 1.5o-2oC warming by 2050 (= Paris agreement goals) even with stabilisation scenario RCP4.5 Lelieveld et., Clim. Change, 2016

21st century temperature extremes By 2100, with business as usual scenario RCP8.5: Dramatic increase of heat extremes Heatwave duration increases x 10 times Max. temperatures during hottest days reach 50oC Lelieveld et., Clim. Change, 2016

MENA climate change hot spot Hot desert climate intensifies and becomes more extreme More frequent and intense heat waves (strong health impacts)  Max average temperature during hottest days can exceed 50oC Heat stress combines with other environmental stresses in urban locations (UHI effect and air pollution) Habitability for humans may be compromised (migration)

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References Klingmüller, K., Pozzer, A., Metzger, S., Stenchikov, G. L., and Lelieveld, J., (2016) Aerosol optical depth trend over the Middle East, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 16, 5063-5073, doi:10.5194/acp-16-5063-2016 Lelieveld, J., Hoor, P., Jöckel, P., Pozzer, A., Hadjinicolaou, P., Cammas, J.-P., and Beirle, S., (2009) Severe ozone air pollution in the Persian Gulf region, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 9, 1393-1406 Lelieveld, J., Hadjinicolaou, P., Kostopoulou, E., Chenoweth, J., El Maayar, M., Giannakopoulos, C., Hannides, C., Lange, M., Tanarhte, M., Tyrlis, E., Xoplaki, E., (2012) Climate change and impacts in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, Climatic Change, 114, 667-687, DOI 10.1007/s10584-012-0418-4 Lelieveld, J., Hadjinicolaou, P., Kostopoulou, E., Giannakopoulos, C., Pozzer, A., Tanarhte, M., Tyrlis, E., (2014) Model projected heat extremes and air pollution in the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East in the twenty-first century, Regional Environmental Change, 14 (5), 1937-1949 Lelieveld J., Proestos Y., Hadjinicolaou P., Tanarhte M., Tyrlis E., Zittis G., (2016) Strongly increasing heat extremes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the 21st century. Climatic Change, doi:10.1007/s10584-016-1665-6 Tanarhte, M., Hadjinicolaou P., and Lelieveld J., (2012) Intercomparison of temperature and precipitation datasets based on observations in the Mediterranean and the Middle-East, Journal of Geophysical Research, 117, D12102, doi:10.1029/2011JD017293 Zachariadis, T., and Hadjinicolaou, P., (2014) The effect of climate change on electricity needs – a case study from Mediterranean Europe, Energy, 76, 899- 910, Special Issue SDEWES 2013: Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems Zanis, P., Hadjinicolaou, P., Pozzer, A., Tyrlis, E., Dafka, S., Mihalopoulos, N., and Lelieveld, J., (2014) Summertime free-tropospheric ozone pool over the eastern Mediterranean/Middle East, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 14 (1), 115-132

20th century observed drying > 50 mm less annual rainfall Spatially variable More wet Arabia Tanarhte et al., J. Geophys. Res., 2012

Lelieveld et., Clim. Change, 2016 21th century rainfall Low robustness (inter-model agreement) for rainfall projections Drying in Mediterranean, North Africa (very likely) More rain over Middle East (probably) Lelieveld et., Clim. Change, 2016

Frequencies of summer (JJA) maximum temperature anomalies (%) Lelieveld et al., Reg. Env. Change, 2014 Blue is reference period (centered around 0oC) and red is end-of-century