MONITORING AND UNDERSTANDING CHANGES IN EXTREMES: Extratropical Storms, Winds, and Waves

摘要

This scientific assessment examines changes in climate extremes associated with extratropical storms, winds, and waves, with an emphasis on U.S. coastal regions during the cold season.Weather and climate extremes profoundly affect society and the environment, resulting in the loss of life, property, and habitat. For example, since 1980 the United States has sustained well over 100 weather and climate disasters where damage exceeded $1billion (U.S. dollars) (www.ncdc.noaa .gov/billions/). Given the obvious importance of extreme events, a working group of the National Climate Assessment (NCA) convened a series of workshops in 2011/12 to address the state of scientific knowledge regarding changes in such extremes. The goal of each workshop was to document observed changes on mul-tidecadal time scales, to assess the suitability of the underlying data, to explore the potential causes of any observed changes, and to rate the overall level of evidence (i.e., as strong, moderate, suggestive, or inconclusive, per NCA guidelines; Moss and Yohe 2011). The first workshop focused on climate hazards, including tornadoes and heavy precipitation (Kunkel et al. 2013). The second workshop focused on larger-scale events, such as heat waves and droughts (Peterson et al. 2013). This paper summarizes the findings of the third work-shop, which addressed extratropical storms, winds, and waves, with an emphasis on U.S. coastal regions during the cold season (November-March).