Rapid flips between warm and cold extremes in a warming world

Rapid flips are sudden shifts in temperature between extreme warm and cold events. Compared with purely warm or cold events without flipping, rapid flips between warm and cold extremes leave a very short time to adapt and mitigate the adverse effects of two opposite hazards, thereby potentially posing much more intense and severe impacts on the ecosystems and society. However, very little is known about rapid temperature flips and how they may change under global warming. In this study, we provide the first investigation of the occurrences, processes, and changes of rapid warm-to-cold and cold-to-warm flips worldwide from 1961 to 2100. The tracked rapid temperature flip events are saved as the NETCDF format. More detailed information related to the uploaded data and code can be found in “README.pdf”.

Citation:  Wu, S., Luo, M., Lau, G.NC. et al. Rapid flips between warm and cold extremes in a warming world. Nature Communications 16, 3543 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58544-5