@Article{Sharma_2026_EESP,
AUTHOR = {Sharma, Bharat and Arya, Sheryl and Ganguly, Auroop R. and Omitaomu, Olufemi A. and Hoffman, Forrest M.},
TITLE = {Anthropogenic Amplification of Heat Waves Across CONUS: Quantification, Attribution, and Urban Implications},
JOURNAL = {Environmental and Earth Sciences Proceedings},
VOLUME = {45},
YEAR = {2026},
NUMBER = {1},
ARTICLE-NUMBER = {20},
ISSN = {3042-5743},
ABSTRACT = {Heat waves and cold snaps affect public health, energy demand, and urban infrastructure, yet separating human influence from natural climate variability remains difficult. We quantify changes in temperature extremes over the contiguous United States (CONUS) using daily climate simulations under natural-only, greenhouse-gas-only, and all-forcings historical scenarios and the future SSP3-7.0 scenario. At each land grid cell, a heat wave is six or more consecutive days with daily maximum temperature above the 99th percentile. In CMIP5 CCSM4 simulations (1950–2005), anthropogenic forcing increases heat wave frequency by 5.02 events per year relative to natural forcing (p = 0.000028), and yields an effective amplification ratio of 3.51 (all-forcing relative to natural-only). The CMIP6 CanESM5 simulations (1950–2014) show the same warm shift, and extending them to 2045 under SSP3-7.0 roughly quintuples the rate of hot day increase (95.5 versus 20.6 days per year) and raises heat wave frequency by 5.66 events per year, with an effective amplification ratio of about 2.72. Both ratios exceed one, but are not directly comparable in magnitude. The largest changes fall on regions and cities growing fast in population from 2000 to 2025, underlining the need for heat mitigation planning in these cities.},
DOI = {10.3390/eesp2026045020}