Why Will a Small Increase in Global Temperature Lead to a Large Increase in the Number of Heat Waves? Truncation and Extreme Events.

This article shows why small changes in a distribution can have outsized effects on extreme events. The paper uses as an initial example, consider the marathon runners. By working through a hypothetical situation using real data from the 2019 Boston marathon, the authors find that if all runners increased their speed by 5%, the number the number of runners with a sub 2:30 time would increase by 160%. The paper illustrates just how common this effect is, by considering the effect of "truncation" on several real-world data sets for tropical storms, daily temperatures and obesity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]