[Grad-postdoc-assn] ASP seminar Friday - Greg Holland

[Brian Tang]

Friday, April 6 @ 11 am
FL2-1022
Lunch with postdocs will follow the seminar in FL2-1002.

Greg Holland
NCAR/NESL/MMM

Climate Impacts on Weather Extremes: Variability and Change; Hurricanes 
to Droughts

Societal vulnerability to weather arises largely from relatively rare 
events at the extremes of the spectrum. Such high-impact weather 
includes: extended droughts, heat waves, major hurricanes, extreme local 
rainfall and snowfall, ice storms, European wind storms, and severe 
local storms and tornadoes. Perhaps somewhat paradoxically, our 
vulnerability to property loss and societal disruption is increasing as 
society becomes more complex and interconnected, and as private, 
industrial and commercial development expands in high-risk areas. 
Understanding and predicting variations and changes in weather extremes 
is thus a major societal issue, encompassing urban commercial and 
industrial planning, watershed maintenance and design, insurance types 
and premiums, and government policy.

In this presentation I examine the difficulties of differentiating 
climate change from variability and the question of when observable 
human-induced climate change commenced, together with the use of extreme 
value theory to objectively assess the intensity and frequency of 
extreme events. These two themes lead to the suggestion that weather 
extremes respond strongly to climate variability and change and, 
somewhat non-intuitively, that such variability and change is best 
interpreted through weather extremes. Finally the potential of climate 
change contributions to current high-impact weather events will be assessed.

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Brian Hong-An Tang
Postdoctoral Fellow
National Center for Atmospheric Research
Mesoscale & Microscale Meteorology Division

Foothills Lab 3 - Rm. 3075
Office: 303-497-8140
Cell: 339-203-1503
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