CompoundEvents: An R package for statistical modeling of compound climate and weather events and their impacts

Extremes, such as droughts, floods, heatwaves, and cold waves, may trigger large impacts on human society and the environment. The concurrent or consecutive occurrences of these extreme events (i.e., compound events) may result in even larger impacts than those caused by isolated extremes. Compound weather and climate extremes have attracted much attention in recent decades due to their disastrous impacts on the environment, ecosystem, and socioeconomics. It is thus of particular importance to improve our understanding of their properties, mechanisms, and impacts. Different methods for analyzing compound events and their impacts have been developed in recent decades. In this study, we introduce an R package for statistical modeling and analysis of compound events using compound precipitation and temperature extreme as examples. There are multiple components in this package, including the characterization, driver assessments, prediction, attribution, and impacts of compound events. For example, after extracting compound events based on the threshold of each variable, the package can be employed to assess the driving factors of compound events and predict their occurrences. The impact of compound events on different sectors (e.g., crop yield, vegetation) can also be assessed based on the multivariate model embedded in this package. This package is expected to be useful for compound events modeling and analysis for both researchers and decision-makers.