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, agricultural practices and the development of insurance solutions designed to encourage investment in cost-effective adaptation measures. Current climate models do not have the capacity to resolve the intensity, damage potential, and other important characteristics of extreme weather, e.g. extended droughts, heat waves, major hurricanes and resulting storm surge, severe local storms and tornadoes, extreme local rainfall and snowfall, ice storms, and wind storms.
The broader impacts of this activity are high. This collaborative project will bring together an international group of regional climate, societal, statistical, risk analysis, and insurance/reinsurance experts. The group will examine the potential for using high-level extreme value statistics to assess weather extremes through a combination of pilot projects and expert workshops. A feature of the program will be colloquia and funding to enable young scientists to develop careers in this cross-disciplinary area.
