Science Source

Vimal Mishra, Auroop R Ganguly, Bart Nijssen, Dennis P Lettenmaier

Environmental Research Letters

Published date January 29, 2015

Changes in observed climate extremes in global urban areas

Uses observed station data for 217 urban areas across the globe, and shows that these urban areas have experienced significant increases (p-value <0.05) in the number of heat waves during the period 1973–2012, while the frequency of cold waves has declined
Finds almost half of the urban areas experienced significant increases in the number of extreme hot days, while almost 2/3 showed significant increases in the frequency of extreme hot nights
Finds extreme windy days declined substantially during the last four decades with statistically significant declines in about 60% in the urban areas
Finds significant increases (p-value <0.05) in the frequency of daily precipitation extremes and in annual maximum precipitation occurred at smaller fractions (17 and 10% respectively) of the total urban areas, with about half as many urban areas showing statistically significant downtrends as uptrends
Finds that changes in temperature and wind extremes, estimated as the result of a 40 year linear trend, differed for urban and non-urban pairs, while changes in indices of extreme precipitation showed no clear differentiation for urban and selected non-urban stations