Compound Wind and Precipitation Extremes Across the Indo-Pacific: Climatology, Variability, and Drivers

Abstract

Compound wind and precipitation extremes (CWPEs) can severely impact multiple sectors and regions, often causing critical infrastructure failure and fatalities, especially in the Indo-Pacific region, which is a hotspot for CWPEs of various synoptic origins. Results show that the northwestern Pacific Ocean and its coasts have experienced the most frequent, strongest, and longest-lasting CWPEs in summer in recent decades, which are induced by cyclones. Landfalling atmospheric rivers are one of the main drivers for frequent occurrences of CWPEs in central and western China and the northwestern Indo-China Peninsula in both boreal summer and winter. The frequency of CWPEs over southern China exhibits significant decreasing trends in contrast to increasing trends in equatorial tropical areas. Moreover, the magnitude and pattern for the observed changes in the frequency of CWPEs result primarily from the variations in the dependence between univariate extremes, when evaluating the Indo-Pacific as a whole.