Weather and climate extremes are associated with large impacts on society and environment, and frequency of some of these extremes has increased and/or is projected to increase in a future climate. It is important to better understand physical mechanisms leading to extremes, their mutual links, and how they are reproduced in climate models. The project deals with temperature and precipitation extremes in Europe, with focus on warm season. The main aims are to (i) examine the role of atmospheric circulation and land-atmosphere coupling in initiating development of temperature extremes and supporting their persistence in observed climate and ERA-5 reanalysis, including the study of links to extremes of precipition and other variables, (ii) analyze spatial patterns of differences between individual driving mechanisms (advective, radiative, and land-surface factors) in key regions of Europe, and (iii) evaluate ability of current high-resolution climate models to reproduce the driving mechanisms of extremes and their spatial patterns. This represents an important step towards better understanding credibility of climate model outputs, and for further model improvements.
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