Dear colleagues,
this Wednesday we have a colloquium about
Climatic extremes and their impacts , 16. Juni 2004
Prof. Martin Beniston Université de Fribourg
"While changes in the long-term mean state of climate will have many important consequences on numerous environmental, social, and economic sectors, the most significant impacts of climatic change are likely to arise from shifts in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. Indeed, insurance costs resulting from extreme weather events have been steadily increasing over the last two decades, in response to both population pressures in regions that are at risk, but also because of the frequency and severity of certain forms of extremes are changing. Regions now safe from catastrophic wind storms, heat waves, and floods are increasingly becoming more vulnerable to these events. The associated damage costs would consequently be extremely high.
It seems appropriate, therefore, considering the environmental, human and economic costs exerted by extreme climatic events, to address the problem of whether there may be significant shifts in extremes of wind, precipitation or temperature in a changing global climate. In order to achieve these goals, the level of current scientific understanding and the availability of computational resources now enable numerical modeling techniques to be applied to this problem area.
Examples will be given of how extreme events may be viewed, i.e., either in terms of their rarity, their intensity, or the pressures they exert on the natural and socio-economic environments. The salient features of extreme events will be highlighted by examining the equation systems that govern fluid flows and atmospheric thermodynamics and how they relate to the "real world". Some attention will also be given to the impacts that these events are capable of generating, in order to assess what areas of science should be focused upon in the future in order to respond to the needs of the "end-user community" (i.e., policy makers and the general public) with a view of reducing the severity of the consequences of extreme climatic events."
See also http://www.physik.unizh.ch/teaching/kolloquium.html for details.