Abstract
Marked increases in heatwave frequency and intensity under global warming threaten ecosystems and societies. While large-scale atmospheric circulation has been considered the dominant influence, the role of land-atmosphere coupling remains unclear. Using ERA5 reanalysis data (1980–2022), we analyze the spatiotemporal evolution of heatwaves and assess soil moisture (SM) and sensible heat flux (SH) anomalies during the two days preceding onset. Most heatwaves occur under the NP (negative SM and positive SH anomalies) state. In 93.41% of global land areas, heatwaves occur most frequently under the NP state, while in 69.53% of land areas, heatwave frequency increases most rapidly under the NP state. Compared with 1980–2000, NP-state heatwaves increased by 5.21 events per decade during 2002–2022, with frequency doubling in 87.29% of land areas. Nearly 7% of land shifted from other states to NP dominance. These results highlight a close association between land-atmosphere coupling and heatwave occurrence.
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Data availability
The ERA5 reanalysis data are available from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts via https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/.
Code availability
The code used for data processing, analysis, and visualization in this study is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) for providing the ERA5 reanalysis data used in this study. This work is funded by the National Key Research and Development Plan of China (No. 2023YFF0805703) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 42271268).
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Z.P., P.B., and X.C. conceived the initial idea and designed the research. P.B. conducted the analyses, wrote the article, and edited the article. N.H., R.G., and J.M. provided constructive ideas. C.W., F.Z., Z.H., E.G., Y.Y., and B.L. retrieved and processed climate and remote sensing data. All authors contributed to the article revision. All authors have read and approved the manuscript.
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Bi, P., Chen, X., Pan, Z. et al. Increasing global heatwave occurrence associated with land-atmosphere interactions. npj Clim Atmos Sci (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-026-01356-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-026-01356-1
