Assessing the Geographical and Climate Space Distributions of Extreme Weather Events

Changes in extreme weather events due to anthropogenic climate change may have large impacts on local weather and climate. A comprehensive knowledge of extreme weather events is necessary for effective climate mitigation. Thus, understanding the past trends within extreme temperature's and extreme precipitation events is necessary for assessing future climate changes. In order to understand these events, we have used a stochastic weather generator to the United States Historical Climate Network (USHCN) observations of daily precipitation and temperature values. With this data, we were able to understand the change in frequency of extreme weather events from 1900-2009, and relate these changes to both spatial and climate space distributions. By combining wavelet multi resolution and information theory approaches, we were then able to quantify the temporal variability in the extreme events. The weather generator also allows us to quantify how the geographical patterns of extreme events vary with climate forcings specifically El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). Understanding the current trends in spatial and temporal variability in the distribution of extreme weather events is vitally important for considering mitigation options for future climate change.