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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Dec 10.
Published in final edited form as: Glob Chang Biol. 2012 Oct 9;19(1):10.1111/gcb.12023. doi: 10.1111/gcb.12023

Figure 1. The two theoretical cases of changing climatic drivers: (1) changes in the mean but not the variance (upper panel), (2) changes in the variance but not the mean of a variable (lower panel).

Figure 1

A third case is conceivable where both the variance and the mean remain comparable, but rare, very extreme events occur, changing essentially the nature of the distribution. Importantly, any discussion of means vs. extremes requires a temporal reference, as a short-term increase in the mean may turn out a long-term increase in the variance.