The title of the question is “extreme weather events” which (in my mind) makes me think of things like hurricanes and droughts and floods. The text of the question is more specifically “extreme temperatures”. The latter seems straightforward: as in Not Relevant’s answer, higher mean temperature leads (other things equal) to extreme (on an absolute not relative scale) high temperature events happening more often, and to extreme low temperature events happening less often, and I think that’s what we see and that’s what everyone expects. The former topic (have hurricanes, droughts, floods, etc. been getting more frequent / extreme? are they expected to in the future?) is a more interesting question that’s not super-obvious from first principles. I recall that it’s a controversial topic within the field, or at least it used to be, I haven’t been following the debate.
I think some of this also hinges on the definition of an extreme event. For instance I don’t think of it as a drought when a desert doesn’t get any rain, that’s just normal weather for a desert. I think climate change is expected to alter the pattern of rainfall, so there could be “events which are normal where they used to happen, but extreme in the places they now happen”.
The title of the question is “extreme weather events” which (in my mind) makes me think of things like hurricanes and droughts and floods. The text of the question is more specifically “extreme temperatures”. The latter seems straightforward: as in Not Relevant’s answer, higher mean temperature leads (other things equal) to extreme (on an absolute not relative scale) high temperature events happening more often, and to extreme low temperature events happening less often, and I think that’s what we see and that’s what everyone expects. The former topic (have hurricanes, droughts, floods, etc. been getting more frequent / extreme? are they expected to in the future?) is a more interesting question that’s not super-obvious from first principles. I recall that it’s a controversial topic within the field, or at least it used to be, I haven’t been following the debate.
I think some of this also hinges on the definition of an extreme event. For instance I don’t think of it as a drought when a desert doesn’t get any rain, that’s just normal weather for a desert. I think climate change is expected to alter the pattern of rainfall, so there could be “events which are normal where they used to happen, but extreme in the places they now happen”.