An ecological perspective on extreme climatic events: a synthetic definition and framework to guide future research

Summary 1. Growing recognition of the importance of climate extremes as drivers of contemporary and future ecological dynamics has led to increasing interest in studying these locally and globally important phenomena. 2. Many ecological studies examining the impacts of what are deemed climate extremes, such as heat waves and severe drought, do not provide a definition of extremity, either from a statistical context based on the long‐term climatic record or from the perspective of the response of the system – are the effects extreme (unusual or profound) in comparison to normal variability? 3. A synthetic definition of an extreme climatic event (ECE) is proposed that includes ‘extremeness’ in both the driver…

• NS
  National Science Foundation
• UD
  U.S. Department of Agriculture
• CE
  Climate Extremes
• CS
  Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service