Syllabus
Climate extremes - basic terms and overview. Definition of an extreme event, temporal and spatial scales of climate extremes, extremes in paleoclimatic data. Temperature extremes, precipitation extremes, hydrometeorological extremes, wind- and snow-storms, extremes of pressure fields, examples. Relationship of extremes to atmospheric circulation and patterns of other variables in synoptic scale.
Statistical models of extremes. Block maxima and peaks-over-threshold models. Selection of block and threshold, basic assumptions of the models. Stationary and non-stationary models of extremes. Regional and local frequency analysis, region-of-influence method. Probability distributions in the extreme value analysis, Poisson process. Methods for estimation of distribution parameters and uncertainty. Return period, design values. Models for multi-day extremes based on time series simulation. Examples of statistical models for temperature and precipitation extremes.
Simulation of extremes in climate models. Methods for comparison of observed and simulated data, spatial and point values. Extremes in global climate models, model errors. Statistical and dynamical downscaling. Temperature and precipitation extremes in regional climate models, continental, regional, local scales. Examples of analysis of current climate models over Europe and the Czech Republic.
Impacts of climate extremes on society, ecosystems, environment. Impacts of high temperatures, droughts, heavy precipitation, wind storms. Examples of recent extremes over Europe - heat waves in western Europe 2003 and eastern Europe 2010, floods in central Europe, wind storms.
Climate change scenarios of climate extremes. Possibilities of construction of scenarios under changing radiative properties of the atmosphere, sources of uncertainty. Scenarios of temperature and precipitation extremes over central Europe. Other influences on the occurrence of climate extremes, solar and volcanic activity.
Annotation
Climate extremes may be associated with large negative impacts on society and ecosystems, and their investigation (from both climatological and statistical points of view) attracts much attention. Advances in the extreme value analysis as part of mathematical statistics have often been motivated by issues dealt with in climatology, hydrology and other related fields of research.