Abstract
This paper reports on an analysis of the relationship of soil moisture to extreme temperatures in Britain, taken from the Hadley Centre general circulation model HadCM3 (1860–2099) and validated using the central England temperature extremes from the overlapping period 1878–2000. By 2100, HadCM3 predicts higher average temperatures and a greater variability, asymmetry, and persistence of warm extremes. A generalized extreme value analysis relates extremes to the periods of low soil moisture in the model. Longer spells of extreme temperature are seen to arise both from the statistical increase in the frequency of extremes and from the extended periods of low soil moisture. As an example, by 2060–2100 the probability of hot spells longer than 7 days with Tmax> 25°C is predicted to rise from its present value of 2%/summer to 10%/summer for high soil moisture summers and to 80%/summer when the low soil moisture summers are included.
Topics

No keywords indexed for this article. Browse by subject →

References
27
[5]
Davison A. C. "Models for exceedances over high thresholds" J. R. Stat. Soc., Ser. B (1990) 10.1111/j.2517-6161.1990.tb01796.x
[11]
Extreme events in a changing climate: Variability is more important than averages

Richard W. Katz, Barbara G. Brown

Climatic Change 10.1007/bf00139728
[16]
European Seasonal and Annual Temperature Variability, Trends, and Extremes Since 1500

Jürg Luterbacher, Daniel Dietrich, Elena Xoplaki et al.

Science 10.1126/science.1093877
[19]
Mitchell J. F. B. T. C.Johns andC. A.Senior(1998) Transient response to increasing greenhouse gases using models with and without flux adjustment Tech. Note 2 Hadley Cent. Exeter UK.
[21]
Nakićenović N. (2000)
[24]
The role of increasing temperature variability in European summer heatwaves

Christoph Schär, Pier Luigi Vidale, Daniel Lüthi et al.

Nature 10.1038/nature02300
[25]
Stedinger J. R. (1993)
Metrics
54
Citations
27
References
Details
Published
Mar 05, 2005
Vol/Issue
110(D5)
License
View
Cite This Article
B. B. Brabson, D. H. Lister, P. D. Jones, et al. (2005). Soil moisture and predicted spells of extreme temperatures in Britain. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 110(D5). https://doi.org/10.1029/2004jd005156