Quantifying the risk of extreme seasonal precipitation events in a changing climate

  • 31/01/2002

  • Nature

Increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide will almost certainly lead to changes in global mean climate. But because - by defnition-extreme events are rare, it is significantly more difficult to quantify the risk of extremes. Ensemblebased probabilistic predictions, as used in short- and medium term forecasts of weather and climate, are more useful than deterministic forecasts using a `best guess' scenario to address this sort of problem.