ArticleScience advances2022
The 2021 western North America heat wave among the most extreme events ever recorded globally.
Article in Science advances, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 43 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
43 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Widespread ecological responses and cascading effects of the 2021 western North American heatwave.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Pooled it
- Higher Daily Air Temperature Is Associated with Shorter Leukocyte Telomere Length: KORA F3 and KORA F4.Environmental science & technology · 2022Pooled it
- Recent globally synchronous seasonal warm events unprecedented since 850 CE.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Sleep Quality in Spanish Adult Women: Associations with Sociodemographic Variables and Pre-Sleep Habits.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Critical slowing down of semiarid vegetation resilience is amplified by intensifying heatwaves.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Outpaced by Drought: Weak Local Adaptation and Limited Potential for Drought Adaptation in a Deciduous Conifer.Evolutionary applications · 2026Article
- Global record-shattering breadbasket droughts emerge from moderately extreme regional events.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Quantifying the contributions of climate change and adaptation to mortality from unprecedented extreme heat events.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Unfolding North American spring weather extremes along a scale ladder.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Extending mammal specimens with their essential phenotypic traits.Journal of mammalogy · 2025Article
- Feeling Disconnected: River Fragmentation Alters Parenting, Aggression, and Risk-Taking in Threespine Stickleback.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- The longest-lasting 2023 western North American heat wave was fueled by the record-warm Atlantic Ocean.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Large live biomass carbon losses from droughts in the northern temperate ecosystems during 2016-2022.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Lack of cold temperatures is driving recent high-summer warming in the southern Rocky Mountains.International journal of biometeorology · 2025Article
- Frequent land-ocean transboundary migration of tropical heatwaves under climate change.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Daily Max Simplified Wet-Bulb Globe Temperature and its Climate Networks for Teleconnection Study, 1940-2022.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Extreme heat risk and the potential implications for the scheduling of football matches at the 2026 FIFA World Cup.International journal of biometeorology · 2025Article
- Changes in event soil moisture-temperature coupling can intensify very extreme heat beyond expectations.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Global emergence of regional heatwave hotspots outpaces climate model simulations.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Subchronic elevation in ambient temperature drives alterations to the sperm epigenome and accelerates early embryonic development in mice.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In June 2021, western North America experienced a record-breaking heat wave outside the distribution of previously observed temperatures. While it is clear that the event was extreme, it is not obvious whether other areas in the world have also experienced events so far outside their natural variability. Using a novel assessment of heat extremes, we investigate how extreme this event was in the global context. Characterizing the relative intensity of an event as the number of standard deviations from the mean, the western North America heat wave is remarkable, coming in at over four standard deviations. Throughout the globe, where we have reliable data, only five other heat waves were found to be more extreme since 1960. We find that in both reanalyses and climate projections, the statistical distribution of extremes increases through time, in line with the distribution mean shift due to climate change. Regions that, by chance, have not had a recent extreme heat wave may be less prepared for potentially imminent events.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.