Extreme climate events have long-ranging impacts

Extreme weather events — though rare — destroy ecosystems and end lives, and they are becoming more common with rising global temperatures. Following extreme events, climate interactions called teleconnections can trigger chain reactions all over the world. Feng et al. aimed to uncover the origins and links between these connection patterns.

“Extreme temperature events are not isolated incidents — they are globally interconnected through both short-range and long-range teleconnections,” said author Jingfang Fan.

They found that local synchronization between events declines with distance, tapering off at 4,632 kilometers. Beyond this threshold, global-scale patterns emerge, shaped by Rossby waves — large-scale atmospheric waves that propagate along great circles on Earth’s surface. Cold weather has more teleconnections than warm, and certain spots are stronger sources or more vulnerable to interactions.

In a case study of the Amazon rainforest, the researchers found patterns of links reaching all the way to Africa, Europe, and Australia.

“While our work focuses on present-day dynamics, this kind of behavior echoes the large-scale synchronization seen in paleoclimate records during glacial periods, and it may also shape how cold events evolve under future warming scenarios,” said Fan.

The researchers found extreme daily temperature changes all over the world from 1979 through 2021, defined as above the 97.5th or below the 2.5th percentile in temperature. This method of network analysis can enhance climate forecasting by identifying causes and effects between extreme events.

They plan to expand this framework with additional climate variables, like wind and precipitation, to further improve climate forecasting and risk assessment.

“Even if short-lived, local extremes can ripple across the globe,” said Fan. “Recognizing these connections is key to improving our resilience in a warming and increasingly volatile world.”

Source: “Global patterns of extreme temperature teleconnections using climate network analysis,” by Yuhao Feng, Jun Meng, and Jingfang Fan, Chaos (2025). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0276151 .