Climate Extremes and Society

by Edited by Henry F. Diaz , Richard J. Murnane

• ISBN13: 9780521870283
• ISBN10: 0521870283
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-06-02
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The past few decades have brought extreme weather and climate events to the forefront of societal concerns. Ordinary citizens, industry, and governments are concerned about the apparent increase in the frequency of weather and climate events causing extreme, and in some instances, catastrophic, impacts.

Table of Contents

List of contributors	p. vii
Foreword	p. xi
Preface: The significance of weather and climate extremes to society: an introduction	p. 1
Defining and modeling the nature of weather and climate extremes	p. 9
Definition, diagnosis, and origin of extreme weather and climate events	p. 11
Observed changes in the global distribution of daily temperature and precipitation extremes	p. 24
The spatial distribution of severe convective storms and an analysis of their secular changes	p. 35
Regional storm climate and related marine hazards in the Northeast Atlantic	p. 54
Extensive summer hot and cold extremes under current and possible future climatic conditions: Europe and North America	p. 74
Beyond mean climate change: what climate models tell us about future climate extremes	p. 99
Tropical cyclones and climate change: revisiting recent studies at GFDL	p. 120
Impacts of weather and climate extremes	p. 145
Extreme climatic events and their impacts: examples from the Swiss Alps	p. 147
The impact of weather and climate extremes on coral growth	p. 165
Forecasting US insured hurricane losses	p. 189
Integrating hurricane loss models with climate models	p. 209
An exploration of trends in normalized weather-related catastrophe losses	p. 225
An overview of the impact of climate change on the insurance industry	p. 248
Toward a comprehensive loss inventory of weather and climate hazards	p. 279
The catastrophe modeling response to Hurricane Katrina	p. 296
The Risk Prediction Initiative: a successful science-business partnership for analyzing natural hazard risk	p. 320
Index	p. 337
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