The EXtreme weather Attribution at mid- and high-Latitudes using advanced statistical Techniques (EXALT) project is an interdisciplinary effort that involves three research institutes: the Namur Institute for Complex Systems (naXys) at UNamur, the Earth and Climate Center (part of ELI, the Earth and Life Institute) at UCLouvain, and the institute of Statistics, Biostatistics and Actuarial Sciences (part of LIDAM, the Louvain Institute of Data Analysis and Modeling in economics and statistics) at UCLouvain. The PhD grants are financed through the Action de Recherche Concertée (ARC) called EXALT - EXtreme weather Attribution at mid- and high-Latitudes using advanced statistical Techniques, under the supervision of Profs. Francesco Ragone, François Massonnet, Johan Segers (UCLouvain) and Anna Kiriliouk (UNamur).

The overall objective of EXALT is to introduce a novel comprehensive framework for extreme event attribution and to apply it to the most influential events in the mid-high latitudes, namely heatwaves and compound drought-heat events over Europe, floods in southern and northern Europe, and sea ice extent over the Antarctic. Our attribution framework will (i) introduce non-stationarity in the extreme-value models, (ii) be developed with a multivariate mindset, and (iii) deliver reliable statistics thanks to a meticulous choice of study region (via clustering methods) and climate data (augmented through rare event algorithms). Our proposed methods aim to better constrain the probabilities of occurrence of past and future extreme events and to arrive at robust attribution statements that do not understate (nor overstate) the further risks that society will face.