Activities

The following activities (Workshops, Meetings and Summer Schools) are/were either initiated by the Grand Challenge on Weather and Climate Extremes or included Sessions organized by it or have other strong thematic links to it:

Various research themes and cross-cutting topics of the Grand Challenge were discussed at the 8th GEWEX Open Science Conference: Extremes and Water on the Edge (Canmore, Canada, 6-11 May 2018). 

Workshops

  • Workshop on Correlated Extremes, aiming to expand and integrate the community of researchers and practitioners becoming interested in spatio-temporally correlated extremes (Columbia University, USA, 28-31 May 2019)
  • Workshop on "Precipitation Extremes", joint organization by the WCRP Grand Challenge on Weather and Climate Extremes and the GEWEX Global Data and Analysis Panel (DWD, Offenbach, Germany, 9-11 July 2018)
  • Workshop on addressing the Challenge of Compound Events (Zurich, Switzerland, 19-21 April 2017): To seek to articulate both current understanding and research gaps of a "compound event", the combination of physical processes leading to an impact, within the context of the four themes of the GC-Extremes (Document, Understand, Attribute and Simulate). A summary of this workshop can be found at the GEWEX Newsletter Vol.27, No.2 (page 10).
  • Workshop synthesizing results of first modeling experiments and dedicated analyses, and planned special issue and review article (TBA, 2016)
  • High-impact weather Workshop (Columbia University, USA, 2016) with a focus on the data needs for high impact weather (including tropical and extratropical cyclones) coordinated with WWRP research activity on High Impact Weather.
  • 13th International Meeting on Statistical Climatology (Canmore, Canada, 6-10 June 2016): On the theme of “uncertainty modeling in the analysis of weather, climate and hydrological extremes”.To develop guidance and tools for the analyses of extremes for the wider climate research community with a large and dedicated session on extremes.
  • Workshop on Atmospheric Blocking (Reading, UK, 6-8 April 2016):Overview of processes leading to blocking, evaluation of representation of blocking in current climate and weather models, links between blocking and regional (feedback) processes (A short summary of the presentations given during the workshop was just published in the SPARC newsletter (p.26)).
  • LandMIP modeling workshop(Zurich, Switzerland, October 2015): This workshop will discuss plans for land-based multi-model experiments within CMIP6, including aspects relevant to the representation of climate extremes
  • “Our common future under climate change” (Paris, France, July 2015), with several parallel sessions on extreme events: “Climate Extremes”, “Attribution of extreme events”, “Extreme Hydrological Events”, and a large parallel session.

Meetings

  • The progress and emerging topics of the GC-Extremes will be presented at the Forum on Scenarios for Climate and Societal Futures (Denver, USA, March 2019), where researchers from various communities will find the opportunity to share their experiences, progress, and plans on climate scenarios (RCPs) and societal scenarios (SSPs) and provide a key means of facilitating integration across the climate modeling, integrated assessment, and impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability communities, as well as with additional relevant research communities including future studies, development economics, and governance.
  • WCRP, together with Future Earth and IRDR, addresses a newly-developed Knowledge-Action Network on Emergent Risks and Extreme Events. At a scoping workshop for a network on emergent risks and extreme events (Tokyo, Japan, 22 November 2017), leaders of GC-Extremes discussed with experts and professions representing diverse aspects of disasters and climate-related risks on possible research priorities, practical collaborations and near-term governance of the Knowledge-Action Network.
  • RMetS/NCAS conference (Manchester, UK July 2016) held a session on “Attribution of changes in extreme events” aimed to advance a crucial and rapidly developing aspect of Extremes Grand Challenge - research into the attribution of past changes in extreme events. It brings together the community investigating mechanisms and the attribution community in order to nudge attribution science towards making quantitative use of mechanisms and feedbacks when attributing and evaluating models; and to raise awareness of quantitative attribution methods in the synoptic and modelling community. The overarching goal was to facilitate the UK community continuing to play a leading role in this international activity.
  • During the Workshop for the International Detection and Attribution Group (IDAG, January 2015) there was a brainstorming session in order to provide a list of necessary steps, supported by the community, as to how CLIVAR/GEWEX can support and coordinate detection and attribution and ensure the robustness of results. The topic further arose during the EUCLEIA meeting in July 2015 and it is expected that a report on the way forward will be produced.

Summer Schools

A large focus of the Climate Extremes Grand Challenge is to support and train the next generation of emerging leaders in the field. To that end, we have developed a series of summer schools focussing on the definition, observations, attribution and physical drivers of extremes in addition to providing the tools and networks to links to the statistics and impacts communities.

  • Nanjing, October 2019: Institute of Advanced Studies in Climate Extremes and Risk Management. This event aims at training the young leaders in extremes research and risk management, filling the bap in the flow of knowledge between climate research and disaster management communities by promoting active knowledge exchanges and integration across climate research and disaster risk reduction research communities. 
  • Monte Verità, August 2015: Swiss International Summer School on Extremes. This summer school is a further activity to train future leaders in the field of extremes research. This summer school also specifically included an interface to impacts research with presentations and workshops by representatives of the impacts community (Red Cross and Red Crescent, SwissRe, MeteoSwiss)