Abstract

Climate change is perceptible in shifting patterns of rainfall, sea ice, temperatures and other phenomena. Although this affects entire distributions of observations, the largest impacts on humans and on the environment that sustains us are likely to be due to extreme events. The fact that such events take place over time and space has led to a surge of research on modelling complex extreme events over the past decade, with many developments in statistical theory and methods that have already influenced applications. The purpose of this chapter, which should be read in conjunction with Chapter 8, is to summarise these developments. Space limitations and its rapid development make it impossible to fully describe this area of research. Other recent summaries are [13], [18], [20] and [67].