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A spatial model for return values of warm extremes in the high Arctic
Author(s) -
Messori G.,
Wada R.,
Woods C.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
quarterly journal of the royal meteorological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.744
H-Index - 143
eISSN - 1477-870X
pISSN - 0035-9009
DOI - 10.1002/qj.3877
Subject(s) - environmental science , extreme value theory , middle latitudes , anomaly (physics) , climatology , arctic , maxima , atmospheric sciences , magnitude (astronomy) , meteorology , geology , statistics , mathematics , geography , oceanography , physics , astronomy , performance art , art history , condensed matter physics , art
Wintertime warm extremes in the high Arctic, primarily associated with intrusions of moist airmasses from the midlatitudes, have occurred with an ostensibly high frequency in recent years. Here, we compute the temperature anomaly return values associated with such events for long return times. Our approach, which we term space‐time maxima–exposure (STM–E), improves on conventional extreme value estimates performed on a single‐location basis by explicitly taking into account the spatial structure of the moisture intrusions driving the temperature extremes. We specifically show that the STM–E approach provides spatially smoother return value estimates, a lower uncertainty in the parameters of the extreme value distribution fits and mitigates the single‐location underestimation of the magnitude of return values of temperature extremes.