Temperature and precipitation extremes affect communities and infrastructure across the globe, but analysing them is difficult without a basis for comparison. Climdex enables quick and convenient access to 27 indices of climate extremes developed by the CCl/WCRP/JCOMM Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI), part of the World Climate Research Programme. These 27 indices describe changes in the frequency and intensity of temperature and precipitation extremes.

Through Climdex (climdex.org), users can get pre-calculated indices for individual stations or pre-gridded for any continuous region of the globe (subject to available data). We are now testing a new data service for Climdex. As well as improving data access on the Climdex website, this service will allow other web services to request and use climate extremes data on-demand. Once testing is complete, we look forward to adding more observational datasets to Climdex.