Local trend disparities of European minimum and maximum temperature extremes

Abstract

Ecosystems and societies are highly vulnerable to extreme temperatures and to changes in the range of temperatures at local scales. Here I will show how trends in warm and cold extremes have evolved over the last six decades in Europe on local scales. Comparing the slopes of two extreme quantiles demonstrates that there are significant disparities in trends of cold and warm temperature extremes at many locations in Europe. At some locations the range of extreme cold and hot temperatures increases, while at other locations it decreases. These results suggest that at some locations both warm and cold extremes intensify which seems to be contradictory to the prevailing view of global warming in which both cold and warm temperatures are expected to increase.