Compound and Concurrent Climate Extremes: Detection, Modeling and Risk Analysis

Hydrologic Extremes and Society
Chair: Hilary McMillan (San Diego State University)
This session focuses on observations, prediction, communication and adaptation to hydrologic extremes. By bringing together ideas from flood and drought research, we analyze similarities and differences in societal impacts and interactions with these two extremes. We explore how providing observations and information about hydrologic extremes can change the way societies understand and react to crisis events.

\"Compound and Concurrent Climate Extremes: Detection, Modeling and Risk Analysis\"
Speaker: Amir AghaKouchak (University of California Irvine)

Human activities in the past century have caused an increase in global temperature. Ground-based observations show a substantial increase in extreme rainfall events, hot spells and heatwaves. A combination of climate events (e.g., low precipitation and high temperatures) may cause a significant impact on the ecosystem and society, although individual events involved may not be severe extremes themselves – a notion known as compound event/extremes. Numerous studies have focused on how different types of extremes have changed or might change in the future. However, only few studies have addressed changes in compound and concurrent events. This presentation focuses on three different types of concurrent and compound extremes including droughtheatwaves, sea level rise-terrestrial flooding, and meteorological-anthropogenic drought. We present different methodological frameworks for detecting, modeling and risk assessment of concurrent and compound extremes using ground based and remote sensing observations.