Global changes in extreme daily temperature since 1950

Brown, S.J.
Caesar, J.
Ferro, Christopher A.T.

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Publication date

April 2013

DOI

10.1029/2006JD008091

Publisher

American Geophysical Union (AGU)

Journal

Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences

Abstract

Copyright 2008 by the American Geophysical UnionExtreme value analysis of observed daily temperature anomalies from a new quasi-global data set indicates that extreme daily maximum and minimum temperatures (>98.5 or <1.5 percentile) have warmed for most regions since 1950. Changes in extreme anomalous daily temperatures are determined by fitting extreme value distributions with time-varying parameters. Changes in the distribution of anomaly exceedances above a high threshold are found to be statistically significant at the 10% level for most land areas when compared with a time-invariant distribution and with the unforced natural variability produced by a coupled climate model. The largest positive trends in the location parameter of the ex...