Chaos and Complex Systems Seminar

Steve Vavrus, UW Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, will discuss a simple, non-parametric index based on the combined percentile rankings of temperature and precipitation (at monthly or longer timescales) that reveals that extreme weather has been unusually pronounced in recent years in Madison and across Wisconsin. Reasons for variation in the index value across locations are probably a combination of chaotic weather processes and emerging anthropogenic climate change.