Trends in Indices of Daily Temperature and Precipitation Extremes in Europe, 1946–99

Abstract

Abstract Trends in indices of climate extremes are studied on the basis of daily series of temperature and precipitation observations from more than 100 meteorological stations in Europe. The period is 1946–99, a warming episode. Averaged over all stations, the indices of temperature extremes indicate “symmetric” warming of the cold and warm tails of the distributions of daily minimum and maximum temperature in this period. However, “asymmetry” is found for the trends if the period is split into two subperiods. For the 1946–75 subperiod, an episode of slight cooling, the annual number of warm extremes decreases, but the annual number of cold extremes does not increase. This implies a reduction in temperature variability. For the 1976–99 subperiod, an episode of pronounced warming, the annual number of warm extremes increases 2 times faster than expected from the corresponding decrease in the number of cold extremes. This implies an increase in temperature variability, which is mainly due to stagnation in ...