Amplitude and frequency of temperature extremes over the North Atlantic region

• Published in: Geophysical Research Letters
• Main Authors: Nogaj, M, Yiou, P, Parey, S, Malek, F, Naveau, P
• Other Authors: Extrèmes : Statistiques, Impacts et Régionalisation (ESTIMR), Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement Gif-sur-Yvette (LSCE), Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ), EDF (EDF), Laboratoire de Modélisation Stochastique et Statistique, Université Paris-Sud - Paris 11 (UP11)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2006
• Subjects: [SDU.OCEAN]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Ocean; Atmosphere; [SDU.STU.CL]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences/Climatology; Labrador Sea; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03189825; https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03189825/document; https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03189825/file/2005GL024251.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1029/2005gl024251

International audience Recent studies on extreme events have focused on the potential change of their intensity during the 20th century, but their frequency evolution has often been overlooked although its socioeconomic impact is equally important. This paper focuses on extreme events of high and low temperatures and their amplitude and frequency changes over the last 60 years in the North Atlantic (NA) region. We analyze the temporal evolution of the amplitude and frequency of extreme events through the parameters of an extreme value distribution applied to NCEP reanalysis for the winter and summer seasons. We examine the relation of the statistics of extremes with greenhouse gas forcing and an atmospheric circulation index and obtain a spatial distribution of the trends of those extreme parameters. We find that the frequency of warm extremes increases over most of the NA while their magnitude does not vary as systematically. Apart from the Labrador Sea and parts of Scandinavia, the features of winter cold extremes exhibit decreasing or no trends.