Assessing Climate Change Impacts on the March 2024 Compound Floods and Saharan Dust Outbreak in Europe

Abstract

This study investigates whether and how climate change affected the compound extreme weather event that caused simultaneous floods in Portugal and an African dust outbreak across the Mediterranean region at the end of March 2024. The event was mainly driven by a large low pressure system located near Western Europe. We use circulation analogs to detect similar weather patterns and assess the possible influence of climate change on this event over the last 44 years. Our findings show that recent similar events are driven by deeper depressions than events further back in time, and follow a different seasonality. In terms of hazards, the more recent events are characterized by both heavier precipitation over the western Iberian Peninsula and larger transport of dust over the central-eastern Mediterranean, pointing to a role of climate change in intensifying the March 2024 event.