An investigation of present and future climate extremes using climate model data

Abstract

This work deals with the investigation of climate extremes using data from global circulation models. These models are one of the main tools that are used by climate scientists to study and quantitatively assess the future effects of climate change. Climate extremes like droughts, heat waves or heavy rain can potentially have severe consequences on people and economies worldwide, and changes in climate extremes can cause these effects to become more severe in the future, so a quantitative investigation of changes in climate extremes is of high relevance. After a general introduction to the climate system, to climate extremes and to the mathematical investigation of extremes we discuss in the first part of the work the validation of climate models in terms of extremes. The second part of the work investigates how climate models predict climate extremes to change in the future. In the third part of the work, we discuss some methods to investigate spatial dependencies of extremes.