Extreme events in biological, societal, and earth sciences: A systematic review of the literature

Abstract

The term “extreme event” is commonly used to describe high-impact, unanticipated natural events, like floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. It first appeared in the scientific literature in the 1950s and has since spread to disciplines as diverse as economics, psychology, medicine, and engineering. The term is increasingly being applied to the study of historical, prehistorical, and deep-time events across a broad range of scales, and it is widely acknowledged that such events have had profound impacts on the Earth’s biodiversity and cultures. Understandably, then, how people think about, define, and study extreme events varies considerably. With extreme events expected to become more frequent, longer lasting, and more intense in the coming decades as a result of global warming, the differing extreme event definitions—both across and within disciplines—is likely to lead to confusion among researchers and pose significant challenges for predicting and preparing for extreme events and their impacts on natural and social systems. With this in mind, we conducted a systematic quantitative review of 200 randomly selected, peer-reviewed “extreme event” research papers (sourced from Web of Science, accessed January 2020) from the biological, societal, and earth sciences literature with the aim of quantifying several pertinent features of the research sample. On the one hand, our analysis found a great deal of variability among extreme event papers with respect to research interests, themes, concepts, and definitions. On the other hand, we found a number of key similarities in how researchers think about and study extreme events. One similarity we encountered was that researchers tend to view extreme events within a particular temporal context and quite often in terms of rates of change. Another similarity we encountered was that researchers often think of and study extreme events in terms of risks, vulnerabilities, and impacts. The similarities identified here may be useful in developing a common and comprehensive definition of what constitutes an extreme event, and should allow for more comparative research into extreme events at all spatio-temporal scales which, we predict, will provide important new insights into the nature of extreme events.