Climate Extremes and Society

Foreword R. S. Pulwarty; Preface H. F. Diaz and R. J. Murnane; Introduction H. F. Diaz and R. J. Murnane; Part I. Defining and Modeling the Nature of Weather and Climate Extremes: 1. Definition, diagnosis, and origin of extreme weather and climate events David Stephenson; 2. Observed changes in the global distribution of daily temperature and precipitation extremes David Easterling; 3. The spatial distribution of severe convective storms and an analysis of their secular changes Harold Brooks and Nikolai Dotzek; 4. Regional storm climate and related marine hazards in the Northeast Atlantic Hans von Storch and Ralf Weisse; 5. Extensive summer hot and cold extremes under current and possible future climatic conditions - Europe and North America Alexander Gershunov and Hervé Douville; 6. Beyond mean climate change - what climate models tell us about future climate extremes Claudia Tebaldi and Gerald A. Meehl; 7. Tropical cyclones and climate change - revisiting recent studies at GFDL Thomas R. Knutson and Robert E. Tuleya; Part II. Impacts of Weather and Climate Extremes: 8. Extreme climatic events and their impacts - examples from the European Alps Martin Beniston; 9. The impact of weather and climate extremes on coral growth M. James C. Crabbe, Emma L. L. Walker, David B. Stephenson; 10. Forecasting US insured hurricane losses Thomas H. Jagger, James B. Elsner and Mark A. Saunders; 11. Integrating hurricane loss models with climate models Charles Watson and Mark Johnson; 12. An exploration of trends in normalized weather-related catastrophe losses Stuart Miller, Robert Muir-Wood and Auguste Boissonnade; 13. An overview of the impact of climate change on the insurance industry Andrew Dlugolecki; 14. Toward a comprehensive loss inventory of weather and climate hazards Susan L. Cutter, Melanie Gall and Christopher T. Emrich; 15. The Catastrophe Modeling response to Hurricane Katrina Robert Muir-Wood and Patricia Grossi; 16. The Risk Prediction Initiative: a successful science-business partnership for analyzing natural hazard risk Richard J. Murnane and Anthony Knap; Index.