The team of Professors Liu Xiaoping and Luo Ming from Sun Yat-sen University and the team of Researcher Pei Tao from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research under the Chinese Academy of Sciences have collaborated to reveal for the first time a new phenomenon of temperature reversal under the background of global warming, that is, extreme events in which the temperature changes rapidly from abnormally warm to abnormally cold, or from abnormally cold to abnormally warm within a few days. The relevant results were recently published online in Nature Communications.
The "roller coaster"-like changes in temperature, which alternate between cold and warm, give society and ecosystems very little time to adapt and buffer, and their impact may be more serious than a single abnormally warm or cold event. The research team has built a method system for identifying and characterizing extreme temperature reversal events, and comprehensively analyzed multiple sets of meteorological observations, reanalysis, and climate model simulation data to ensure the reliability of the results. After preliminary verification, this method system can effectively identify typical examples of rapid cold and warm reversals that have occurred in history.
The study systematically characterized for the first time the spatiotemporal distribution characteristics of temperature reversal events over the global land area, and found that such events are widely distributed in the mid- and high-latitude regions of the world. Since the mid-20th century, the frequency of temperature reversal events has increased, the intensity has intensified, and the transition has accelerated, and this trend will be further intensified under high-emission scenarios in the future. If effective climate change mitigation measures are not taken, humans will face more frequent and more intense "roller coaster"-style extreme reversal events and their superimposed impacts in a warmer future.
Luo Ming pointed out that the research results are of great significance to improving human society's ability to cope with the complex risks of extreme climate. Relevant departments can use this to improve the early warning system and thus reduce losses in agriculture, energy, public safety and other fields.
Related paper information:
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58544-5
(Original title: "Research by Sun Yat-sen University and others reveals new phenomenon of temperature reversal")
