Short-tailed Temperature Distributions over North America and Implications for Future Changes in Extremes

Geophys. Res. Lett., 42, 8577-8585, doi:10.1002/2015GL065602. Group page.

Abstract. Some regions of North America exhibit non-normal temperature distributions. Shorter-than-Gaussian warm tails are a special subset of these cases, with potentially meaningful implications for future changes in extreme warm temperatures under anthropogenic global warming. Locations exhibiting shorter-than-Gaussian warm tails would experience a greater increase in extreme warm temperature exceedances than a location with a Gaussian or long warm side tail under a simple uniform warm shift in the distribution. Here we identify regions exhibiting such behavior over North America and demonstrate the effect of a simple warm shift on changes in extreme warm temperature exceedances. Some locations exceed the 95th percentile of the original distribution by greater than 40% of the time after this uniform shift. While the manner in which distributions change under global warming may be more complex than a simple shift, these results provide an observational baseline for climate model evaluation.

Citation:
Loikith, P. C., and J. D. Neelin, 2015: Short-tailed Temperature Distributions over North America and Implications for 1 Future Changes in Extremes. Geophys. Res. Lett., 42, 8577-8585, doi:10.1002/2015GL065602.