Persistent summer weather can have significant socio-economic impacts. Prolonged hot-dry conditions may lead to crop yield losses, while consecutive rainy days (e.g. associated with stalling cyclones) can cause flooding. Both observational and climate model analyses indicate that global warming weakens the hemispheric-wide circulation in boreal summer, yet it is still largely unclear what this weakening implies for the persistence of regional weather conditions. Here, I present multiple lines of evidence supporting that weather persistence in summer has been increasing over the last 40 years over most mid-latitude regions and will continue to do so under future global warming. Methodologically, we use a persistence metric rooted in dynamical systems theory, which does not require partitioning instantaneous atmospheric states in an arbitrary number of clusters. This makes it ideally suited to detect subtle changes in atmospheric motions including weather-persistence. I discuss relevant recent literature and argue that there is now substantial evidence for increasing weather persistence over mid-latitude regions, providing enhanced extreme weather risks for society.
