Bart van den Hurk

• Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut

In 2012, soybean crops failed in the three largest producing regions due to spatially compounded hot and dry weather across North and South America. Here, we present different impact storylines of the 2012 event, calculated by combining a statistical crop model with climate model simulations of 2012 conditions under pre-industrial, present-day (+1...

We see unprecedented weather causing widespread impacts across the world. In this perspective, we provide an overview of methods that help anticipate unprecedented weather hazards that can contribute to stop being surprised. We then discuss disaster management and climate adaptation practices, their gaps, and how the methods to anticipate unprecede...

Recent disasters have highlighted the severe local impacts of extreme precipitation, including flash floods, landslides, and urban inundation. Despite significant investments in early-warning systems, these events often catch many people off-guard, emphasizing the need for better translation of warnings into early actions. In this study, we directl...

Climate impacts will continue to evolve over the coming decades, requiring regions worldwide to obtain actionable climate information. Global climate models (GCMs) are often used to explore future conditions, but the variability of projections among GCMs complicates regional climate risk assessments. This variability in future projections is only p...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) plays a pivotal role in delivering information and knowledge on sea level rise (SLR), a global threat impacting coastlines worldwide. However, considerable disparities still persist in Europe in understanding and applying sea level science, evaluating its repercussions, and devising effective ada...

Sea level rise (SLR) is a global concern for low-lying coastal areas, including many European coasts. The European Knowledge Hub on Sea Level Rise (KH-SLR), a collaborative effort by the Joint Programming Initiatives for “Connecting Climate Knowledge for Europe” (JPI Climate) and for “Healthy and Productive Seas and Oceans” (JPI Oceans), has develo...

Compound events occur when multiple drivers or hazards combine to create societal or environmental risks. Many high-impact weather and climate events, such as simultaneous heatwaves and droughts, are compound in nature, leading to more severe consequences than individual events. This review examines the growth of compound event research in the deca...

In this study, we present a machine‐learning model capable of predicting food insecurity in the Horn of Africa, which is one of the most vulnerable regions worldwide. The region has frequently been affected by severe droughts and food crises over the last several decades, which will likely increase in future. Therefore, exploring novel methods of i...

The European Knowledge Hub on Sea Level Rise (KH-SLR), an initiative by JPI Climate and JPI Oceans, has developed its first Assessment Report to address the challenges posed by sea level rise (SLR) in Europe. This report, preceded by a series of targeted surveys and workshops with researchers and stakeholders (e.g. coastal decision makers), has syn...

In the upcoming decades, climate change impacts will increasingly emerge, requiring regions worldwide to obtain actionable climate information. Global Climate Models (GCMs) are often used to explore future conditions, but the variability of projections among GCMs complicates regional climate risk assessments. Often, multi-model means of climate res...

Flood adaptation measures such as levees, flood-proofing structures, nature-based solutions and flood insurance are essential to cope with the growing flood risk caused by climate change and urban development into flood-prone areas. However, many communities in flood zones are ill-protected because the implementation of adaptation measures is hinde...

Coastal settlements, facing increasing flood risk from Tropical Cyclones (TCs) under climate change, need local and detailed climate information for effective adaptation. Analysis of historical events and their impacts provides such information. This study uses storylines to evaluate adaptation strategies, focusing on Cyclone Idai’s impact on Beira...

High impact events like Hurricane Sandy (2012) significantly affect society and decision-making around weather/climate adaptation. Our understanding of the potential effects of such events is limited to their rare historical occurrences. Climate change might alter these events to an extent that current adaptation responses become insufficient. Furt...

In 2012, soybean crops failed in the three largest producing regions due to spatially compound hot and dry weather across North and South America. Here, we present different impact storylines of the 2012 event by imposing the same seasonally evolving atmospheric circulation in a pre-industrial, present day (+1°C above pre-industrial), and future (+...

The 2021 summer flooding was an extremely rare event, driven by precipitation extremes that exceed Dutch design levels for flood protection of relatively small rivers and waterways. However, similar events in neighboring locations cannot be ruled out in the near future. The implications of such extreme rainfall amounts will vary by region, subject...

Multi-hazard events, characterized by the simultaneous, cascading, or cumulative occurrence of multiple natural hazards, pose a significant threat to human lives and assets. This is primarily due to the cumulative and cascading effects arising from the interplay of various natural hazards across space and time. However, their identification is chal...

The physical climate storyline (PCS) approach is increasingly recognized by the physical climate research community as a tool to produce and communicate decision‐relevant climate risk information. While PCS is generally understood as a single concept, different varieties of the approach are applied according to the aims and purposes of the PCS and...

The Horn of Africa region has frequently been affected by severe droughts and food crises over the last several decades, and this will increase under projected global-warming and socio-economic pathways. Therefore, exploring novel methods of increasing early warning capabilities is of vital importance to reducing food-insecurity risk. In this study...

Recent work has shown that (sub-)seasonal variability in tropical Pacific convection, closely linked to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), relates to summertime circulation over the Euro-Atlantic. The teleconnection is non-stationary, probably due to long-term changes in both the tropical Pacific and extra-tropical Atlantic. It also appears i...

High impact events like Hurricane Sandy (2012) significantly affect society and decision-making around weather/climate adaptation. Our understanding of the potential effects of such events is limited to their rare historical occurrences. Climate change might alter these events to an extent that current adaptation responses become insufficient. Furt...

Much of the forecast skill in the mid-latitudes on seasonal timescales originates from deep convection in the tropical belt. For boreal summer, such tropical–extratropical teleconnections are less well understood compared to winter. Here we validate the representation of boreal summer tropical–extratropical teleconnections in a general circulation...

The Horn of Africa faces an ongoing multi-year drought due to five consecutive failed rainy seasons, a novel climatic event with unpreceded impacts. Beyond the starvation of millions of livestock, close to 23 million individuals in the region are currently facing high food insecurity in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia alone. The severity of these impac...

Projections of changes in extreme droughts under future climate conditions are associated with large uncertainties, owing to the complex genesis of droughts and large model uncertainty in the atmospheric dynamics. In this study we investigate the impact of global warming on soil moisture drought severity in west-central Europe by employing pseudo g...

Unlabelled: Fiscal resilience against disasters is vital for the recovery in the aftermath of climate hazards. Without swift access to available funds for disaster relief, damages to human and the economy would be further exacerbated. How insurance may influence fiscal performance over time and can increase fiscal resilience for today and under a...

For efficient management of the Dutch surface water reservoir Lake IJssel, (sub)seasonal forecasts of the water volumes going in and out of the reservoir are potentially of great interest. Here, streamflow forecasts were analyzed for the river Rhine at Lobith, which is partly routed through the river IJssel, the main influx into the reservoir. We a...

Subseasonal forecasts are challenging for numerical weather prediction (NWP) and machine learning models alike. Forecasting 2-m temperature (t2m) with a lead time of 2 or more weeks requires a forward model to integrate multiple complex interactions, like oceanic and land surface conditions leading to predictable weather patterns. NWP models repres...

While soybeans are among the most consumed crops in the world, most of its production lies in the US, Brazil, and Argentina. The concentration of soybean growing regions in the Americas renders the supply chain vulnerable to regional disruptions. In 2012, anomalous hot and dry conditions occurring simultaneously in these regions led to low soybean...

Quote: “What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand.” (Xunzi, ∼300 BCE).Modelling complex interactions involving climatic features, socio-economic vulnerability or responses, and long impact transmissions is associated with substantial uncertainty. Physical climate storylines are proposed as an approach to explore complex...

Consideration of compound drivers and impacts are often missing from applications within the Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) cycle, leading to poorer understanding of risk and benefits of actions. The need to include compound considerations is known, but lack of guidance is prohibiting practitioners from including these considerations. This article m...

Physical climate storylines, which are physically self-consistent unfoldings of events or pathways, have been powerful tools in understanding regional climate impacts. We show how embedding physical climate storylines into a causal network framework allows user value judgments to be incorporated into the storyline in the form of probabilistic Bayes...

Recent work has shown that (sub-)seasonal variability in tropical Pacific convection, closely linked to ENSO, relates to summertime circulation over the Euro-Atlantic. The teleconnection is non-stationary, probably due to long-term changes in both the tropical Pacific and extra-tropical Atlantic. It also appears imperfectly captured by numerical mo...

The climate of High Mountain Asia (HMA) has changed in recent decades. While the temperature is consistently increasing at a higher rate than the global warming rate, precipitation changes are inconsistent, with substantial temporal and spatial variation. Climate warming will have enormous consequences for hydroclimatic extremes. For the higher alt...

Projections of changes in extreme droughts under future climate conditions are associated with large uncertainties, owing to the complex genesis of droughts and large model uncertainty in the atmospheric dynamics. In this study we investigate the impact of global warming on soil moisture drought severity in west-central Europe by employing pseudo-g...

Reliable sub-seasonal forecasts of high summer temperatures would be very valuable for society. Although state-of-the-art numerical weather prediction (NWP) models have become much better in representing the relevant sources of predictability like land- and sea-surface states, the sub-seasonal potential is not fully realized. Complexities arise bec...

Sub-daily extreme precipitation in Jakarta exhibits trends that are related to local temperature, seasonal tropical monsoon circulations, and other environmental drivers. An analysis of 81 years of hourly rainfall between 1900 and 2010 shows a significant increase of about doubling the number of short-duration rainfall events in the wet season. In...

To support climate adaptation decision-making, a picture of current and upcoming climate and socio-economic conditions is required, including an overview of intervention scenarios and their impact. In order to be actionable, this picture needs to rely on credible, relevant, and legitimate information, which implies the use of tested models and conc...

Sea-level rise (SLR) confronts coastal societies and stakeholders with increasing hazards and coastal risks with large uncertainties associated to these changes. Adaptation to SLR requires societal and policy decision-making to consider these changing risks, which are in turn defined by socio-economic development objectives and the local societal c...

COVID-19 has revealed how challenging it is to manage global, systemic and compounding crises. Like COVID-19, climate change impacts, and maladaptive responses to them, have potential to disrupt societies at multiple scales via networks of trade, finance, mobility and communication, and to impact hardest on the most vulnerable. However, these compl...

For efficient management of the Dutch surface water reservoir Lake IJssel, (sub)seasonal forecasts of the water volumes going in and out of the reservoir are potentially of great interest. Here, streamflow forecasts were analyzed for the river Rhine at Lobith, which is partly routed through the river IJssel, the main influx into the reservoir. We a...

Conventional green roofs have often been criticised for their limited water buffer capacity during extreme rainfall events and for their susceptibility to droughts when additional irrigation is unavailable. One solution to these challenges is to create an extra blue water retention layer underneath the green layer. Blue-green roofs allow more storm...

As the leading climate mode of wintertime climate variability over Europe, the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) has been extensively studied over the last decades. Recently, studies highlighted the state of the Eurasian cryosphere as a possible predictor for the wintertime NAO. However, missing correlation between snow cover and wintertime NAO in c...

The Working Group I (WGI) contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) assess the physical science basis of climate change. As part of that contribution, this Technical Summary (TS) is designed to bridge between the comprehensive assessment of the WGI Chapters and its Summary for Policymakers (SPM). I...

Climate services can provide valuable information that can help society to enhance resilience, survive, and even prosper in the face of climate risk. However, priorities might differ across sectors, regions, and scales. This Voices asks: what are the priorities to advance and deliver climate services for resilience and preparedness?

The co-occurrence of (not necessarily extreme) precipitation and surge can lead to extreme inland water levels in coastal areas. In a previous work the positive dependence between the two meteorological drivers was demonstrated in a managed water system in the Netherlands by empirically investigating an 800-year time series of water levels, which w...

Unfavourable weather is a common cause for crop failures all over the world. Whilst extreme weather conditions may cause extreme impacts, crop failure commonly is induced by the occurrence of multiple and combined anomalous meteorological drivers. For these cases, the explanation of conditions leading to crop failure is complex, as the links connec...

Strategic decision-making on long-term drought risk management can be supported by integrated assessment models to explore uncertain future conditions and potential policy actions. Such models have to meet many – sometimes conflicting – requirements posed by policy-makers, model developers, and stakeholders. This paper discusses the case of the Nat...

Changes in snow and vegetation cover associated with global warming can modify surface albedo (the reflected amount of radiative energy from the sun), therefore modulating the rise of surface temperature that is primarily caused by anthropogenic greenhouse-gases emission. This introduces a series of potential feedbacks to regional warming with posi...

The Working Group I (WGI) contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) assess the physical science basis of climate change. As part of that contribution, this Technical Summary (TS) is designed to bridge between the comprehensive assessment of the WGI Chapters and its Summary for Policymakers (SPM). It...

Abstract The climate science community is challenged to adopt an actionable risk perspective, which is difficult to align with the traditional focus on model‐based probabilistic climate change projections. Event‐based storylines can provide a way out of this conundrum by putting emphasis on plausibility rather than probability. This links directly...

Joint CASCADES–RECEIPT policy brief

Several sets of reference regions have been used in the literature for the regional synthesis of observed and modelled climate and climate change information. A popular example is the series of reference regions used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advan...

This study is motivated by a near flooding event in 2012 in the Netherlands classified as a compound event (van den Hurk et al., 2015). With the aim to obtain methods computationally less expensive than numerical simulations, statistical models have been used to model compound events and estimate 50 their probability of occurrence. Two novel aspect...

Tropical convective activity represents a source of predictability for mid-latitude weather in the Northern Hemisphere. In winter, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the dominant source of predictability in the tropics and extratropics, but its role in summer is much less pronounced and the exact teleconnection pathways are not well underst...

Translating and incorporating climate information into decision-making and policy planning processes is challenging. In tailoring climate data to sector-specific user needs, climate services are seen as key mechanisms for facilitating this translation and incorporation, supporting climate change adaptation and sustainable development. The European...

Compound weather and climate events describe combinations of multiple climate drivers and/or hazards that contribute to societal or environmental risk. Although many climate-related disasters are caused by compound events, the understanding, analysis, quantification and prediction of such events is still in its infancy. In this Review, we propose a...

The succession of European surface weather patterns has limited predictability because disturbances quickly transfer to the large‐scale flow. Some aggregated statistics, however, such as the average temperature exceeding a threshold, can have extended predictability when adequate spatial scales, temporal scales and thresholds are chosen. This study...

Abstract. Tropical convective activity represents a source of predictability for mid-latitude weather in the Northern Hemisphere. In winter, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the dominant source of predictability in the tropics and extra-tropics, but its role in summer is much less pronounced and the exact teleconnection pathways are not w...

Abstract. Several sets of reference regions have been proposed in the literature for the regional synthesis of observed and model-projected climate change information. A popular example is the set of reference regions introduced in the IPCC Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Adaptation (SREX) bas...

Present-day land temperatures simulated by state-of-the-art global climate models exhibit considerable uncertainty. Generally it is assumed that these temperature biases do not affect the projected warming in response to rising greenhouse gas concentrations (i.e. drop out by subtracting projected and present-day temperatures), but for specific regi...

Uncertainties in the rate and magnitude ofsea-level rise (SLR) complicate decision making on coastal adaptation. Large uncertainty arises from potential ice mass-loss from Antarctica that could rapidly increase SLR in the second halfofthis century. The implications ofSLRmaybe existential for a low- lying country like the Netherlands and warrant exp...

IMproving PRedictions and management of hydrological EXtremes (IMPREX) was a European Union Horizon 2020 project that ran from September 2015 to September 2019. IMPREX aimed to improve society’s ability to anticipate and respond to future extreme hydrological events in Europe across a variety of uses in the water-related sectors (flood forecasting,...

Flood risk can be reduced at various stages of the disaster management cycle. Traditionally, permanent infrastructure is used for flood prevention, while residual risk is managed with emergency measures that are triggered by forecasts. Advances in flood forecasting hold promise for a more prominent role to forecast-based measures. In this study, we...

The alternation of active and break phases in Indian summer monsoon (ISM) rainfall at intraseasonal timescales characterizes each ISM season. Both tropical and mid-latitude drivers influence this intraseasonal ISM variability. The circumglobal teleconnection observed in boreal summer drives intraseasonal variability across the mid-latitudes, and a...

Many winter deep low-pressure systems passing over Western Europe have the potential to induce significant storm surge levels along the coast of the North Sea. The accompanying frontal systems lead to large rainfall amounts, which can result in river discharges exceeding critical thresholds. The risk of disruptive societal impact increases strongly...

Forecast-based actions are increasingly receiving attention in floodrisk management.However, uncertainties and constraints in forecast skill highlight the need to carefully assess the cost and benefits of the actions in relation to the limitations of forecast information. Forecast skill decreases with increasing lead time, and therefore ,an inheren...

Flood early warning systems play a more substantial role in risk mitigation than ever before. Hydrological forecasts, which are an essential part of these systems, are used to trigger action against floods around the world. This research presents an evaluation framework, where the skills of the Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS) are assessed in...

A better anticipation of high-impact heat and drought on human activity is the underlying motivation of many climate studies focused on the summer season. Although a large body of research has already highlighted the prominent impact of soil moisture anomalies on summer mid-latitudes climate variability and predictability, it still leaves room for...

Spatio-temporal variation of hydrological processes that have a strong lagged autocorrelation (memory), such as soil moisture, snow accumulation and the antecedent hydro-climatic conditions, significantly impact the peaks of flood waves. Ignoring these memory processes leads to biased estimates of floods and high river levels that are sensitive to...

East Africa experiences chronic food insecurity, with levels varying from year-to-year across the region. Given that much can be done to prevent this level of suffering before it happens, humanitarian agencies monitor early indicators of food insecurity to trigger early action. Forecasts of total seasonal rainfall are one tool used to monitor and a...

As climate change research becomes increasingly applied, the need for actionable information is growing rapidly. A key aspect of this requirement is the representation of uncertainties. The conventional approach to representing uncertainty in physical aspects of climate change is probabilistic, based on ensembles of climate model simulations. In th...

Earth System Models (ESM) are key ingredients of many of the climate services that are currently being developed and delivered. However, ESMs have more applications than the provision of climate services, and similarly many climate services use more sources of information than ESMs. This discussion paper elaborates on dilemmas that are evident at t...

In the version of this Perspective originally published, the names of the authors of reference 13 were presented incorrectly, with their first names in place of their last names; this has been corrected accordingly to read: “Diakakis, M., Deligiannakis, G., Katsetsiadou, K. & Lekkas, E.”.

In a warmer climate, it is expected that precipitation intensities will increase, and form a considerable risk of high-impact precipitation extremes. This study applies three methods to transform a historic extreme precipitation event in the Netherlands to a similar event in a future warmer climate, thus compiling a “future weather” scenario. The f...

High-resolution climate information provided by e.g. regional climate models (RCMs) is valuable for exploring the changing weather under global warming, and assessing the local impact of climate change. While there is generally more confidence in the representativeness of simulated processes at higher resolutions, internal variability of the climat...

Floods, wildfires, heatwaves and droughts often result from a combination of interacting physical processes across multiple spatial and temporal scales. The combination of processes (climate drivers and hazards) leading to a significant impact is referred to as a ‘compound event’. Traditional risk assessment methods typically only consider one driv...

Extreme temperatures are one of the leading causes of death and disease in both developed and developing countries, and heat extremes are projected to rise in many regions. To reduce risk, heatwave plans and cold weather plans have been effectively implemented around the world. However, much of the world's population is not yet protected by such sy...

Many winter deep low-pressure systems passing over Western Europe have the potential to induce significant storm surge levels along the coast of the North Sea. The accompanying frontal systems lead to large rainfall amounts, which can result in river discharges exceeding critical thresholds. The risk of disruptive societal impact increases strongly...

Empirical evidence shows that acting on early warnings can help humanitarian organizations reduce losses, damages and suffering while reducing costs. Available forecasts of extreme events can provide the information required to automatically trigger preparedness measures, while ‘value of information’ approaches can, in principle, guide the selectio...