Statistics of Heat Waves Working Group

Links

Participants

Purpose

References

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Purpose

This web page serves as a resource for the Working Group on Statistics of Heat Waves. The purpose of the Working Group is to promote the use of appropriate statistical methods, including those based on the statistical theory of extreme values, for modeling hot spells and heat waves.

Heat waves are a complex form of extreme climate event with substantial health impacts. Yet extreme value theory has rarely been applied. Challenges include how to model the temporal clustering of temperatures at high levels and whether multivariate extreme value theory can be used to model climate variables that can contribute to heat waves (e.g., maximum and minimum temperature, dew point or humidity, wind speed, cloud cover). Applications of such methods would include comparing the statistical characteristics of observed heat waves (e.g., frequency, duration, intensity) with those simulated by numerical models of the climate system, as well as detecting trends in observed heat wave statistics. Statistical modeling of the relationship between mortality and heat waves also poses challenges, especially concerning estimating the effects of changes in heat wave characteristics.

This Working Group was formed as one outcome of Exteme Events in Weather and Climate -- An Interdisciplinary Workshop, Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery, Banff, Alberta, Canada, 22-27 August 2010.


Participants
  • Rick Katz (NCAR, Boulder, CO, USA) Coordinator (email: rwk@ucar.edu)
  • Dan Cooley (Colorado St. Univ., Fort Collins, CO, USA)
  • Eva Furrer (Univ. Zurich, Switzerland)
  • Eric Gilleland (NCAR, Boulder, CO, USA)
  • Peter Guttorp (Univ. Washington, Seattle, WA, USA)
  • Kam Hamadieh (Rice Univ., Houston, TX, USA)
  • Birgir Hrafnkelsson (Univ. Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland)
  • Yun Li (CSIRO, Perth, Australia)
  • Jana Sillmann (Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis, Victoria, BC, Canada)
  • Michael Wehner (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA)
  • Kai Zhang (Univ. Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA)


Links
Climate Information Decision Support Tool for Heat in Europe, EuroHeat Project
Extreme Heat: Are You Ready? U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency
Health Impacts of Climate Change -- What the Research Says, Health Impacts Working Group, ASA Advisory Committee on Climate Change Policy
Heat Wave: A Major Summer Killer, U.S. National Weather Service
Heat Wave Plan for England, U.K. Department of Health
Southern Cities Heatwaves: Impacts and adaptation response of infrastructure and communities to heatwaves: the southern Australian experience of 2009, National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility


References

Definitions
Meze-Hausken, E., 2008: "On the (im)-possibilities of defining human climate thresholds." Climatic Change, 89, 299-324.
Robinson, P., 2001: "On the definition of a heat wave." Journal of Applied Meteorology, 40, 762-775.

Mortality and Morbidity
Anderson, B.G., and M.L. Bell, 2009: "Weather-related mortality: How heat, cold, and heat waves affect mortality in the United States." Epidemiology, 20, 205-213.
Curriero, F.C., K.S. Heiner, J.M. Samet, S.L. Zeger, S.L. Strug, and J.A. Patz, 2002: "Temperature and mortality in 11 cities of the eastern United States." American Journal of Epidemiology, 155, 80-87.
Gosling, S.N., J.A. Lowe, G.R. McGregor, M. Pelling, and B.D. Malamud, 2009: "Associations between elevated atmospheric temperature and human mortality: a critical review of the literature." Climatic Change, 92, 299-341.
D'Ippoliti et al., 2010: "The impact of heat waves on mortality in 9 European cities: results from the EuroHEAT project." Environmental Health, 9, 37.
Kalkstein, L.S., and R.E. Davis, 1989: "Weather and human mortality: An evaluation of demographic and interregional responses in the United States." Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 79, 44-64.
Kalkstein, L.S., and J.S. Greene, 1997: "An evaluation of climate/mortality relationships in large U.S. cities and the possible impacts of climate change." Environmental Health Perspectives, 105, 84-93.
Li, B. et al., 2011: "The impact of extreme heat on morbidity in Milwaukee, Wisconsin." Climatic Change, DOI 10.1007/s10584-011-0120-y.
Sheridan, S.C., A.J. Kalkstein, and L.S. Kalkstein, 2009: "Trends in heat-related mortality in the United States, 1975-2004." Natural Hazards, 50, 145-160.

Observed Climate Change
Charpentier, A., 2010: "On the return period of the 2003 heat wave." Climatic Change, DOI 10.1007/s10584-010-9944-0.
Karl, T.R., and R.W. Knight, 1997: "The 1995 Chicago heat wave: How likely is a recurrence?" Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 78, 11007-1119.
Katsoulis, B.D., and N. Hatzianastassiou, 2005: "Analysis of hot spell characteristics in the Greek region." Climate Research, 28, 229-241.
Khaliq, M.N., T.B.M.J. Ouarda, A. St-Hilaire, and P. Gachon, 2007: "Bayesian change-point analysis of heat spell occurrences in Montreal, Canada." International Journal of Climatology, 27, 805-818.
Khaliq, M.N., A. St-Hilaire, T.B.M.J. Ouarda, and B. Bobee, 2005: "Frequency analysis and temporal pattern of occurrences of southern Quebec heatwaves." International Journal of Climatology, 25, 485-504.
Kuglitsch, F.G. et al., 2010: "Heat wave changes in the eastern Mediterranean since 1960." Geophysical Research Letters, 37, L04802, doi:10.1029/2009GL041841.

Predicted Climate Change
Clark, R.T., J.M. Murphy, and S.J. Brown, 2010: "Do global warming targets limit heatwave risk?" Geophysical Research Letters, 37, L17703.
Hunt, B.G., 2007: "A climatology of heat waves from a multimillennial simulation." Journal of Climate, 20, 3802-3821.
Koffi, B., and E. Koffi, 2008: "Heat waves across Europe by the end of the 21st century: multiregional climate simulations." Climate Research, 36, 153-168.
Meehl, G.A., and C. Tebaldi, 2004: "More intense, more frequent, and longer lasting heat waves in the 21st century." Science, 305, 994-997.
Schar, C., P. Vidale, D. Luthi, C. Frei, C. Haberli, M.A. Liniger, and C. Appenzeller, 2004: "The role of increasing temperature variability in European summer heatwaves." Nature, 427, 332-336.
Tebaldi, C., K. Hayhoe, J.M. Arblaster, and G.A. Meehl, 2006: "Going to the extremes: an intercomparison of model-simulated historical and future changes in extreme events." Climatic Change, 79, 185-211.

Statistical Models
Abaurrea, J., J. Asin, A.C. Cebrian, and A. Centelles, 2007: "Modeling and forecasting extreme hot events in the central Ebro valley, a continental-Mediterranean area." Global and Planetary Change, 57, 43-58.
Coles, S.G., J.A. Tawn, and R.L. Smith, 1994: "A seasonal Markov model for extremely low temperatures." Environmetrics, 5, 221-239.
Furrer, E.M., R.W. Katz, M.D. Walter, and R. Furrer, 2010: "Statistical modeling of hot spells and heat waves." Climate Research, 43, 191-205.
Kysely, J., 2002: "Probability estimates of extreme temperature events: Stochastic modelling approach vs. extreme value distributions." Studia Geophysica et Geodaetica, 46, 93-112.


To participate in the Working Group on Statistics of Heat Waves, please contact Rick Katz (email: rwk@ucar.edu).