Central England Temperatures: With Jean Palutikof I have done preliminary investigations of extreme temperature behavior of long temperature records in the UK.  The Central England Temperature series compiled first by G. Manley in 1974 and on a daily basis in 1992 by Parker, Legg, and Folland, is a carefully homogenized instrumental record of daily temperatures extending back to 1772.  Utilizing the strengths of extreme value theory we have analyzed this temperature series and find that temperature trends of the extreme events are significantly different from the behavior of the distribution mean.  We are in the process of submitting our first paper for publication containing these results.

Extensions: Extensions of our work take two directions. First, we are in a position to carry out an analysis of long temperature series in Europe. A number of such time series have been collected by researchers at the Climatic Reaearch Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia with their collaborators and will include data from key stations throughout western Europe.  These extended records are central to the verification of the reliability of general circulation models (GCM's). Second, we are considering an extremes analysis of GCM "data", a necessary step in understanding the extent to which climate models are able to accurately represent temperature extremes.  The importance of understanding extreme behaviors lies in the disproportionate role that these extremes have on the economic impact of climate.

Publications:
Brabson, B.B.& J.P. Palutikof, The evolution of extreme temperatures in the Central England temperature record, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 29, NO. 24, 2163, doi:10.1029/2002GL015964, 2002.

Transparencies from a Colloquium Talk.

Updated: January 5, 2006