Past studies on weather and climate extremes have focused on individual extremes. These studies cannot effectively track/model compound extreme events such as drought/wildfire. The major objective of this study is to evaluate the changing risk of compound extremes for various levels of warming in future climate projections at the Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (DOE-EM) sites. Using dynamically downscaled datasets at 12 km resolution from 3 representative GCMs, we explore four different compound extreme event impacts (dry-warm, dry-cold, wet-cold, and wet-warm) for two time periods, historical observed period (1964–2014) and the future period (2045-2054 and 2085-2094) for the following DOE-EM sites: Hanford in Washington, Moab in Utah, Oak Ridge in Tennessee, Paducah in Kentucky, Portsmouth in Ohio, Savannah River Site in South Carolina, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, and West Valley Demonstration Project in New York. Results from our study provide better understanding of the impact of climate extremes on mission-critical assets at EM cleanup sites.
