Recent climate extremes have broken long-standing records by large margins. Such extremes unprecedented in the observational period often have substantial impacts due to a tendency to adapt to the highest intensities, and no higher, experienced during a lifetime. Here, we show models project not only more intense extremes but also events that break previous records by much larger margins. These record-shattering extremes, nearly impossible in the absence of warming, are likely to occur in the coming decades. We demonstrate that their probability of occurrence depends on warming rate, rather than global warming level, and is thus pathway-dependent. In high-emission scenarios, week-long heat extremes that break records by three or more standard deviations are two to seven times more probable in 2021–2050 and three to 21 times more probable in 2051–2080, compared to the last three decades. In 2051–2080, such events are estimated to occur about every 6–37 years somewhere in the northern midlatitudes.

最近的极端气候事件大大打破了长期记录。由于倾向于适应一生中经历的最高强度，而不是更高强度，这种观测期间前所未有的极端情况通常会产生重大影响。在这里，我们展示的模型不仅预测了更强烈的极端事件，而且还预测了以更大的幅度打破先前记录的事件。在没有变暖的情况下，这些破纪录的极端事件几乎不可能发生，但很可能在未来几十年内发生。我们证明了它们的发生概率取决于变暖速率，而不是全球变暖水平，因此取决于途径。在高排放情况下，与过去 30 年相比，在 2021-2050 年，以三个或更多标准差打破记录的为期一周的极端高温发生的可能性是 2 到 7 倍，在 2051-2080 年是 3 到 21 倍。在 2051-2080 年，此类事件估计大约每 6-37 年在北部中纬度地区发生一次。