Do observations show that rare extremes increase relatively more compared to common extremes?

In a recent analysis of 25 CMIP6 models, Gründemann et al. (2022, https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-022-00558-8) have shown that by the end of this century, daily land rainfall extremes could increase in magnitude between 10.5% and 28.2% for annual events (1 year return period), and between 13.5% and 38.3% for centennial events (100 year return period). The higher relative increase for larger return period was consistent for all climate models and scenarios. However, this study was solely based on model output and so far, this finding was not validated by observations. Using a large sample of stations with long time series, we analyzed whether the rare extremes have indeed been increasing relatively more because of global warming. Moreover, we analyzed sensitivity to the choice of time period, return period and rainfall duration.