Increases in the frequency of extreme weather events is probably the climate change impact that receives most attention in the media. In this presentation I will show projections for changes in precipitation extremes over western Canada, based on a small ensemble of high resolution regional climate simulations.
I will first briefly introduce the general characteristics of precipitation East and West of the Rocky Mountains, and outline the major hydro-climatic changes that are expected for this region. Then I will show how the frequency of rare extreme events can be estimated statistically from a limited sample (Extreme Value Analysis) and apply this technique to the model projections. The main conclusion from this analysis is that precipitation will become more intermittent and the frequency of extreme precipitation events will roughly double by the end of the century.