Fig 1.
Schematic of the interconnectedness of the impacts, the critical systems and the adaptation and response measures in case of a heat and drought extreme event.
Fig 2.
Illustrative selection of climatic information for different concurrent heat and drought events of the first two decades of the 21st century.
The numbers on this figure are based on information provided in Table 1. This map was made with a base layer downloaded from Natural Earth (https://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/110m-physical-vectors/).
Table 1.
Illustrative selection of climatic information for the different concurrent heat and drought extreme events.
Fig 3.
Scheme of cascading impacts and interconnectedness of systems, sectors and assets affected by heat and drought extreme events.
The arrows point from the event or sector that affects another sector or asset to the sector or asset that is affected. The colors of the arrows identify the main driver of the impact and the width of the arrows is representative for the importance of the impact. It reflects the number of associated interconnections or mentions found in the literature.
Table 2.
Main systems and sectors affected (x) for the analyzed historical heat and drought extreme events.
Table 3.
Illustrative examples of impacts caused by concurrent heat and drought extremes in different sectors.
Fig 4.
Scheme of implemented and suggested response measures and adaptation policy in the face of heat and drought extreme events.
The arrows point from the adaptation measure to the sectors or assets (green boxes) for which they are aiming at adaptation. “Wildfires” (red box) is treated as an additional sector here, as it is an event strongly connected to heat and drought extremes and like some of the other sectors causes a lot of need for response and adaptation measures. The black symbols give an indication of the type of measure that is implemented or suggested (e.g. communication, restriction, planning etc.). The red arrows indicate when responses or adaptation in one sector may have adverse effects in another sector.
Fig 5.
Combined scheme of cascading impacts and interconnectedness of systems, sectors and assets affected by heat and drought extreme events as well as by adverse effects of adaptation actions taken to relieve heat and drought impacts.
The arrows point from the affecting event (red circle), adaptation action (white boxes) or sector (green circles) to the sector or asset that is affected. The colors of the arrows identify the main driver of the impact and indicate the effect of adaptation measures. The width of the impact arrows is representative for the importance of the impact. It reflects the number of associated interconnections or mentions found in the literature. The width of the arrows used to show response and adaptation effects is uniform and does not represent their importance.