Journal article
CO2-induced climate change assessment for the extreme 2022 Pakistan rainfall using seasonal forecast
- Abstract:
- While it is widely believed that the intense rainfall in summer 2022 over Pakistan was substantially exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change climate models struggled to confirm this3,4. Using a high-resolution operational seasonal forecasting system that successfully predicted the extreme wet conditions, we perform counterfactual experiments simulating pre-industrial and future conditions. Both experiments also exhibit strong anomalous rainfall, indicating a limited role of CO2-induced forcing. We attribute 10% of the total rainfall to historical increases in CO2 and ocean temperature. However, further increases in the future suggest a weak mean precipitation reduction but with increased variability. By decomposing rainfall and large-scale circulation into CO2 and SST-related signals, we illustrate a tendency for these signals to compensate each other in future scenarios. This suggests that historical CO2 impacts may not reliably predict future responses. Accurately capturing local dynamics is therefore essential for regional climate adaptation planning and for informing loss and damage discussions.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 5.5MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41612-025-01136-3
Authors
+ European Commission
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/00k4n6c32
- Grant:
- 101003469
+ UK Research and Innovation
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/001aqnf71
- Grant:
- 10058083
+ Natural Environment Research Council
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/02b5d8509
- Grant:
- R8/H12/83/006
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- npj Climate and Atmospheric Science More from this journal
- Publication date:
- 2025-07-09
- Acceptance date:
- 2025-06-14
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2397-3722
- Language:
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English
- Pubs id:
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2133352
- Local pid:
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pubs:2133352
- Deposit date:
-
2025-06-30
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Weisheimer et al
- Copyright date:
- 2025
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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