Cascading Drought‐Heat Dynamics During the 2021 Southwest United States Heatwave

In June of 2021 the Southwest United States experienced a record-breaking heatwave. This heatwave came at time when region was in severe drought. As drought alters surface energy budget ways that affect lower atmosphere temperature and circulations, it is possible combined drought-heat event cascading climate hazard, which preexisting exacerbated We apply satellite observation numerical experiments with Weather Research Forecasting (WRF) model to test for land-atmosphere feedbacks during consistent influence. find modest positive effect, as WRF simulations include have marginally higher air temperatures than those exclude initial conditions, more substantial effects wetter, forested areas. Evidence drought-heat-drought-coupled similarly our simulations, accounting preconditioning led small reduction simulated precipitation region.