Impact of climate extremes

Global impacts of hydro-climatic extremes on vegetation

There is an extended perception that ecosystems worldwide are being subjected to increased environmental stress due to climate change.

Recent advances in satellite Earth observation – with the development of consistent global historical records of crucial environmental and climatic variables – provide new means to understand the impact of climate extremes on terrestrial ecosystems.

In addition, these datasets offer an observational benchmark to evaluate the skill of climate models at representing climatic extremes and vegetation dynamics.

What we do

We map how droughts, heat waves and extreme rain events have changed in frequency and intensity over the past three decades with as overarching goal to uncover the consequences these changes have for terrestrial ecosystems.

The ability of our current IPCC climate models to estimate these processes is evaluated by comparison to novel satellite-based data records.

Contact

• Prof. Diego G. Miralles
• www.sat-ex.ugent.be