Extremes

EXTREMES is a project within the ETH domain, which has the goal to improve the understanding of rare events. Such events can have catastrophic consequences for human activities, through their impacts on health and on the natural and constructed environments. It is widely believed that the frequency of rare events–avalanches, floods, heat waves, and so forth–is increasing as a result of climatic and other changes, yet they are hard to predict and their effects are poorly-understood. Recent developments in the statistics of extremes and the increased availability of relevant high-quality data have the potential both to deepen our grasp of the underlying physical phenomena, and to aid in the construction of models and tools for forecasting the occurrence and impact of extreme events.

SLF participates in the project in order to better understand the spatial distribution, and natural variability of heavy snowfall events, which often lead to infrastructure failure, traffic interruption or damaging avalanches. Furthermore, we would like to know if the frequency or intensity of heavy snow fall events already changed in the last 100 years.

Kontakt:

• Marcia Phillips
  

Weitere Informationen: CCES-Extremes, ETH