Causes and Predictions of 2022 Extremely Hot Summer in East Asia

Abstract In the background of long‐term global warming, the northern hemisphere experienced an extremely hot summer in 2022 with the hottest on record for Europe and China, and the second‐hottest for North America and Asia. The hot summer concurred with a triple‐dip La Niña in the tropical Pacific. Given the extremity of the hot summer in East Asia in 2022, in this work, we examine the associated atmospheric circulation and assess the real‐time predictions from the North American Multimodel Ensemble (NMME). Also, we identify the contributions of long‐term warming trends, sea surface temperature (SST) forcing, and an atmospheric feedback to the hot summer. The hot summer in East Asia in 2022 is due to the extremely strong and westward expanded western Pacific subtropical high. That leads to cloud cover reduction and increases in net downward shortwave radiation at the surface, and further strengthens the positive surface air temperature (SAT) anomalies. In contrast, the seasonal‐interannual variation of SST has a minor impact. Thus, the hot summer is mainly associated with the long‐term trend and amplified by the positive feedback among the SAT, cloud cover, and net downward shortwave radiation. NMME with the initial conditions in May 2022 predicts positive SAT anomalies in most regions of East Asia, but does not capture the observed spatial distribution pattern and amplitudes. The failure implies the challenge of state‐of‐the‐art climate models in predicting such extreme events.