Heatwaves in Florida and Their Future

Florida, in the southeast US, is vulnerable to heatwaves due to its unique geolocation, exacerbated by both high temperature and humidity. To better understand the future impact on heatwave events over Florida we first conduct a retrospective analysis of these heat wave events in the current century using atmospheric reanalysis dataset (ERA5) as a verification dataset to verify two decades of simulations from a relatively high-resolution coupled ocean-atmosphere (RSM-ROMS) and atmosphere (RSM) only regional models. The analysis investigates the length, intensity, and characteristic kinematic and thermodynamic features of heatwave events over Florida between 1986-2005. After ascertaining the fidelity of the models from this retrospective analysis we proceeded to examine the future projection of the heatwave events for the decades of 2041-2060. The future projections are presented only for RSM since the differences from RSM-ROMS for the isolated heatwave events was found to be insignificant for the current and the future periods. We found the projected change of earlier first and later last dates of future heatwave events are associated with a projected increase in the mean surface temperature, a reduction of surface humidity, and a westward dislocation of the North Atlantic Subtropical High. Similarly, we also find that the frequency of the one, two, three, four, and five day heatwave events increase in the mid-21st century relative to the late-20th century period.