Precipitation extremes in the Iberian Peninsula related to NAO and ENSO

On account of their potentially severe socio-economic impact, precipitation extremes are a subject of great interest within the field of climate research. This is even more so when there appear to exist indications that global climate change might bring about an intensification of these extreme phenomena. The prediction of these changes, and of the probability of occurrence of extreme episodes themselves, would clearly benefit from a better understanding of how they are affected by relevant climatic signals such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). In the present study, we address the influence of NAO and ENSO on wintertime daily precipitation extremes in the Iberian peninsula. By means of a simple compositing technique, we attempt to investigate whether the effects of those two signals show any interrelation, that may reveal an interaction between them.