Abstracted/indexed

Trends in gridded temperature data are commonly assessed independently for each grid cell, ignoring spatial coherencies. This may severely affect the interpretation of the results. This article proposes a space–time model for temperatures that allows for joint assessments of the trend across locations. In a case study of summer season trends in Europe, it is found that the region with a significant trend under spatial coherency is vastly different from that under independent assessments.

Visibility is estimated for the 21st century using global and regional climate model output. A baseline decrease in visibility in the Arctic (10 %) is more notable than in the North Atlantic (< 5 %). We develop an adjustment that yields greater consistency among models and explore the justification of our ad hoc adjustment toward ship observations during the historical period. Baseline estimates are found to be sensitive to the representation of temperature and humidity.

Two-dimensional wavelet transformations can be used to analyse the local structure of predicted and observed precipitation fields and allow for a forecast verification which focuses on the spatial correlation structure alone. This paper applies the novel concept to real numerical weather predictions and radar observations. Systematic similarities and differences between nature and simulation can be detected, localized in space and attributed to particular weather situations.

State-of-the-art statistical methods are applied to postprocess an ensemble of numerical forecasts for vertical profiles of air temperature. These profiles are important tools in weather forecasting as they show the stratification and the static stability of the atmosphere. Flexible regression models combined with the multi-dimensionality of the data lead to better calibration and representation of uncertainty of the vertical profiles.

Event attribution studies can now be performed at short notice. We document a protocol developed by the World Weather Attribution group. It includes choices of which events to analyse, the event definition, observational analysis, model evaluation, multi-model multi-method attribution, hazard synthesis, vulnerability and exposure analysis, and communication procedures. The protocol will be useful for future event attribution studies and as a basis for an operational attribution service.

Extremes in weather can have lasting effects on human health and resource consumption. Studying the recurrence of these events on a regional scale can improve response times and provide insight into a changing climate. We introduce a set of clustering tools that allow for regional clustering of weather recordings from stations across Germany. We use these clusters to form regional models of summer temperature extremes and find an increase in the mean from 1960 to 2018.

Uncertainties in land model projections are important to understand in order to build confidence in Earth system modeling. In this paper, we introduce a framework for estimating uncertain land model parameters with machine learning. This method increases the computational efficiency of this process relative to traditional hand tuning approaches and provides objective methods to assess the results. We further identify key processes and parameters that are important for accurate land modeling.

Very short-term forecasting, called nowcasting, is used to monitor storms that pose a significant threat to people and infrastructure. These threats could include lightning strikes, hail, heavy precipitation, strong winds, and possible tornados. This paper proposes a fast approach to nowcasting lightning threats using simple statistical methods. The proposed model results in fast nowcasts that are more accurate than a competitive, computationally expensive, approach.

Scientists often are confronted with the question of whether two time series are statistically distinguishable. This paper proposes a test for answering this question. The basic idea is to fit each time series to a time series model and then test whether the parameters in that model are equal. If a difference is detected, then new ways of visualizing those differences are proposed, including a clustering technique and a method based on optimal initial conditions.

Evaluation of modern high-resolution global climate models often does not account for the geographic location of the underlying weather station data. In this paper, we quantify the impact of geographic sampling on the relative performance of climate model representations of precipitation extremes over the United States. We find that properly accounting for the geographic sampling of weather stations can significantly change the assessment of model performance.

We have developed a novel and fast statistical method for diagnosing effective radiative forcing (ERF), a measure of the net effect of greenhouse gas emissions on Earth's energy budget. Our method works by inverting a recursive digital filter energy balance representation of global climate models and has been successfully validated using simulated data from UK Met Office climate models. We have estimated time series of historical ERF by applying our method to the global temperature record.

We have developed a new statistical method to describe how a severe weather event, such as a heat wave, may have been influenced by climate change. Our method incorporates both observations and data from various climate models to reflect climate model uncertainty. Our results show that both the probability and the intensity of the French July 2019 heatwave have increased significantly in response to human influence. We find that this heat wave might not have been possible without climate change.

The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) has a significant impact on seasonal climate and surface weather conditions throughout Europe, North America and the North Atlantic. In this paper, we study a number of linear and nonlinear models for a station-based time series of the daily winter NAO. We find that a class of nonlinear models, including both short and long lags, excellently reproduce the characteristic statistical properties of the NAO. These models can hence be used to simulate the NAO.

A new method for weather and climate forecast model evaluation with respect to observations is proposed. Individually added values are estimated for each model, together with shared information both models provide equally on the observations. Finally, shared model information, which is not present in the observations, is calculated. The method is applied to two examples from climate and weather forecasting, showing new perspectives for model evaluation.