Trends in the Extremes of Environments Associated with Severe U.S. Thunderstorms

Severe thunderstorms can have devastating impacts. Concurrently high values of convective available potential energy (CAPE) and storm relative helicity (SRH) are known to be conducive to severe weather, so high values of PROD = (CAPE)1/2 × SRH have been used to indicate high risk of severe thunderstorms. We consider the extreme values of these three variables for a large area of the contiguous United States over the period 1979–2015 and use extreme-value theory and a multiple testing procedure to show that there is a significant time trend in the extremes for PROD maxima in April, May, and August, for CAPE maxima in April, May, and June, and for maxima of SRH in April and May. These observed increases in CAPE are also relevant for rainfall extremes and are expected in a warmer climate but have not previously been reported. Moreover, we show that El Niño–Southern Oscillation explains variation in the extremes of PROD and SRH in February. Our results suggest that the risk from severe thunderstorms in April and May is increasing in parts of the United States where it was already high and that the risk from storms in February is increased over the main part of the region during La Niña years.