Detection and attribution of changes to the extremes of climate variables such as rainfall, temperature, evapotranspiration, winds, streamflow, and storm tides is fundamental to support efforts to adapt to future climate change. Furthermore, these variables lead to natural hazards including heatwaves, droughts, fires, storms, floods and coastal extremes that can have impacts on human lives, infrastructure and the environment. However, progress has been hampered in many cases because of the limited availability of high-quality, long observational data records, and the modelling challenges associated with representing key physical processes at the relevant spatial and temporal scales.
This session seeks to explore modelling approaches to improve detection and attribution of change in climate extremes. Models are interpreted in a broad sense to encompass statistical approaches to describe and detect change, and dynamical models (e.g. climate models and hazard models) that encompass key processes related to the variable and/or hazard in question. Papers that seek to bridge the multiple scales associated with key extremes, and/or capture the interactions between hazards, are particularly encouraged.
This session is organised under the auspices of the Australian Water and Energy Exchange Research Initiative (www.ozewex.org) that is part of the international GEWEX and HEPEX programmes.