Impact of long-wave climatic oscillations on the persistent hydrologic extremes

Abstract

Extreme weather and climatic events affect our society and the environment, particularly when several extreme events occur simultaneously in space and/or time –Compound events. Univariate extremes (e.g., droughts, heatwaves) have been thoroughly investigated in the last few decades and several indicators have been developed for quantifying and monitoring them. Although these indicators provide critical information for management and planning, they tend to underestimate the occurrence probability of compound extremes. Moreover, the current understanding of compound events is still blurred and unclear. Although, multivariate compound events –simultaneous occurrence of multiple extreme events over a region– are being investigated globally as a hot topic and multiple modelling and prediction frameworks have been developed to investigate their changes and impacts, spatially compound extremes –concurrent extreme events at multiple locations– which are more impactful, on the other hand, remain unexplored. This thesis explores spatial compounding in droughts, heatwaves, and compound droughts and heatwaves among the IPCC regions.