Climatic warming changes to Northern European extreme temperature processes over the past 500 years

One of the most telling effects of the weather and climate is the occurrence of rare extreme events. As extremes are typically sudden and climate variability is a slower process, it is important to assess how severe changes have become and to aim to understand why. As the climate dynamics of the mean state are altering, can we also establish accurately if there are systematic changes to the extreme temperature process? One main challenge for assessing such climate dynamic alterations across these time scales is how to analyse records across the pre-industrial paleo and instrumental eras of the past 500 years. This analysis focusses on Northern European temperatures and their mean state and extremes changes. The analysis is done using a form of Dominant Frequency State Analysis where the extreme process (modelled as a Generalised Extreme Value process) can be distinguished from the variation of the mean state. The methods used in this approach are generic and can be applied in any study of extremes provided there is data (instrumental, simulated or paleo-proxies) that is of sufficient quality. This work reports how the extreme temperature process properties for Northern Europe appear to have altered across 500 years and I’ll discuss the climate dynamics interpretation of these results.