Abstract

Climate change has emerged as one of the defining issues of the 21st century. Canadian scientists have contributed influentially to understanding its causes and to developing projections of how the global climate might evolve during this century. Aspects of their work that rely fundamentally on the application of statistical concepts and methods include the detection and attribution of changes in mean and extreme conditions, the analysis of the causes of individual extreme events affecting Canada and other parts of the world, and the projection of climate conditions later in this century. Canadian scientists have also leant their expertise to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), leading the development of chapters in IPCC reports dealing changes in mean and extreme conditions that have contributed to the understanding that emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels are the primary cause of observed climate change. This talk will focus primarily on the development and application of methods for the detection and attribution of long term changes in the probability and intensity of extreme precipitation events – an area in which Canadian research has strongly contributed to the body of evidence that the IPCC has used to making increasingly confident assessments of the impacts of anthropogenic climate change on damaging extreme precipitation events.