TY - GEN A1 - Siegmund, Jonatan Frederik A1 - Wiedermann, Marc A1 - Donges, Jonathan Friedemann A1 - Donner, Reik Volker T1 - Impact of temperature and precipitation extremes on the flowering dates of four German wildlife shrub species T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Ongoing climate change is known to cause an increase in the frequency and amplitude of local temperature and precipitation extremes in many regions of the Earth. While gradual changes in the climatological conditions have already been shown to strongly influence plant flowering dates, the question arises if and how extremes specifically impact the timing of this important phenological phase. Studying this question calls for the application of statistical methods that are tailored to the specific properties of event time series. Here, we employ event coincidence analysis, a novel statistical tool that allows assessing whether or not two types of events exhibit similar sequences of occurrences in order to systematically quantify simultaneities between meteorological extremes and the timing of the flowering of four shrub species across Germany. Our study confirms previous findings of experimental studies by highlighting the impact of early spring temperatures on the flowering of the investigated plants. However, previous studies solely based on correlation analysis do not allow deriving explicit estimates of the strength of such interdependencies without further assumptions, a gap that is closed by our analysis. In addition to direct impacts of extremely warm and cold spring temperatures, our analysis reveals statistically significant indications of an influence of temperature extremes in the autumn preceding the flowering. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 497 KW - event coincidence analysis KW - climate-change KW - weather extremes KW - plant phenology KW - interannual variability KW - air-temperature KW - responses KW - drought KW - trends KW - summer Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-408352 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 497 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Murawski, Aline A1 - Bürger, Gerd A1 - Vorogushyn, Sergiy A1 - Merz, Bruno T1 - Can local climate variability be explained by weather patterns? BT - a multi-station evaluation for the Rhine basin T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - To understand past flood changes in the Rhine catchment and in particular the role of anthropogenic climate change in extreme flows, an attribution study relying on a proper GCM (general circulation model) downscaling is needed. A downscaling based on conditioning a stochastic weather generator on weather patterns is a promising approach. This approach assumes a strong link between weather patterns and local climate, and sufficient GCM skill in reproducing weather pattern climatology. These presuppositions are unprecedentedly evaluated here using 111 years of daily climate data from 490 stations in the Rhine basin and comprehensively testing the number of classification parameters and GCM weather pattern characteristics. A classification based on a combination of mean sea level pressure, temperature, and humidity from the ERA20C reanalysis of atmospheric fields over central Europe with 40 weather types was found to be the most appropriate for stratifying six local climate variables. The corresponding skill is quite diverse though, ranging from good for radiation to poor for precipitation. Especially for the latter it was apparent that pressure fields alone cannot sufficiently stratify local variability. To test the skill of the latest generation of GCMs from the CMIP5 ensemble in reproducing the frequency, seasonality, and persistence of the derived weather patterns, output from 15 GCMs is evaluated. Most GCMs are able to capture these characteristics well, but some models showed consistent deviations in all three evaluation criteria and should be excluded from further attribution analysis. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 525 KW - athmospheric circulation patterns KW - stochastic rainfall model KW - within-type variability KW - river Rhine KW - precipitation KW - temperature KW - trends KW - classification KW - Europe KW - scenarios Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-410155 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 525 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Boettle, Markus A1 - Rybski, Diego A1 - Kropp, Jürgen T1 - Quantifying the effect of sea level rise and flood defence BT - a point process perspective on coastal flood damage T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - In contrast to recent advances in projecting sea levels, estimations about the economic impact of sea level rise are vague. Nonetheless, they are of great importance for policy making with regard to adaptation and greenhouse-gas mitigation. Since the damage is mainly caused by extreme events, we propose a stochastic framework to estimate the monetary losses from coastal floods in a confined region. For this purpose, we follow a Peak-over-Threshold approach employing a Poisson point process and the Generalised Pareto Distribution. By considering the effect of sea level rise as well as potential adaptation scenarios on the involved parameters, we are able to study the development of the annual damage. An application to the city of Copenhagen shows that a doubling of losses can be expected from a mean sea level increase of only 11 cm. In general, we find that for varying parameters the expected losses can be well approximated by one of three analytical expressions depending on the extreme value parameters. These findings reveal the complex interplay of the involved parameters and allow conclusions of fundamental relevance. For instance, we show that the damage typically increases faster than the sea level rise itself. This in turn can be of great importance for the assessment of sea level rise impacts on the global scale. Our results are accompanied by an assessment of uncertainty, which reflects the stochastic nature of extreme events. While the absolute value of uncertainty about the flood damage increases with rising mean sea levels, we find that it decreases in relation to the expected damage. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 559 KW - climate-change KW - North-Sea KW - extremes KW - costs KW - 21st-Century KW - adaptation KW - statistics KW - impacts KW - trends KW - cities Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-412405 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 559 ER -