Climate Change and Variability

Extreme weather events and climate change

Friederike Otto, HT 2014

The aim of this tutorial is to understand the influence of a changing climate on

extreme weather events and our current state of knowledge of this topic.
Please answer (1) one of the two questions below in a short essay, max.1500
words, and (2) prepare an outline of an experiment to find answers to the
research question described in (2) and be prepared to discuss this in the tutorial..
This is meant to be an outline, not a detailed experimental design, so you will
need to decide on the main steps and reflect on the potential problems occurring
at each step.
1) Questions to answer in an essay.
Either
i) Given the current state of knowledge, what can we say about changes
in extreme precipitation events under climate change?
OR
ii) Compare the current state of knowledge on extreme temperature (heat
waves) and precipitation events in Europe.

AND
2) The last couple of months have been a real washout here in the UK, whether
we are just unlucky or if this is a manifestation of climate change is a question
many people would like to have the answer to. Imagine you are a scientist
and are asked by your boss to design a model experiment to answer the
question, what would you do?
Outline how you would design such an experiment. If you are convinced that
we cannot answer this question at this point, with available models and data,
think of an experiment that brings us a step nearer to an answer.
In this outline you might want to consider for example: what kind of modelling
framework would you use; what kind of observations you might need; which
variables you need to compute; if you need daily data or monthly or even subdaily; which aspects of the circulation your model might need to be able
represent; what your ideal result figure would look like.

Reading List
This list is not exhaustive, you might want to consult other sources refered to in
these papers. The papers in bold are especially important but these alone wont
give you all information you need.
Allen and Ingram (2002) Constraints on future changes in climate and the
hydrologic cycle. Nature, 419:224-232
Allen (2003) Liability for climate change. Nature, 421:891-892.
Barriopedro et al. (2011) The hot summer of 2010: Redrawing the Temperature
Record Map of Europe. Science, 332:220-224.
Chou et al. (2009) Evaluating the Rich-Get-Richer Mechanism in Tropical
Precipitation Change under Global Warming. Journal of Climate, 22:1982- 2005.
Coumou and Rahmstorf (2012) A decade of weather extremes. Nature Climate
Change, 2:491-496.
Diffenbaugh and Scherer (2011) Observational and model evidence of global
emergence of permanent, unprecedented heat in the 20 th and 21st centuries.
Climatic Change, 107:615-624.
Dole et al. (2011) Was there a basis for anticipating the 2010 Russian heat
wave? GRL, 38:L06702.
Hegerl and Zwiers (2011) Use of models in detection and attribution of climate
change. WIREs Clim Change, 2:570-591.
Jones et al. (2008) Human contribution to rapidly increasing frequency of very
warm Northern Hemisphere summers. Journal of Geophysical Research,
113:D02109.
OGorman (2012) Sensitivity of tropical precipitation extremes to climate change.
Nature geoscience, 5:697-700.
OGoreman et al. (2012) Energetic Constraints on Precipitation Under Climate
Change. Surv Geophys, 33:585-608.
Otto et al. (2012) Reconciling two approaches to attribution of the 2010 Russian
heat wave. GRL, 39:L04702
Pall et al. (2011) Anthropogenic greenhouse gas contribution to flood risk in
England and Wales in autumn 2000. Nature, 470:382-385.

Peterson et al. (2012) Explaining extreme events of 2011 from a climate

perspective. BAMS, DOI:10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00021.1
Peterson et al. (2013) Explaining extreme events of 2012 from a climate
perspective. BAMS, DOI:10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00021.1
Rahmstorf and Coumou (2011) Increase of extreme events in a warming world.
PNAS, 108:17905-17909.
Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to
Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX).
http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/report/
Stott et al. (2011) Changing return periods of weather-related impacts: the
attribution challenge. Climatic change, 109:263-268.
Sutton and Dong (2012) Atlantic Ocean influence on a shift in European climate
in the 1990s. Nature geoscience, 5:788-792.
Trenberth (2012) Framing the way to relate climate extremes to climate change.
Climatic Change, 115:283-290.
van Oldenborgh (2007) How unusual was autumn 2006 in Europe? Climate of
the Past, 3:659-668.