# Abstract:

As part of global climate change an accelerated hydrologic cycle (including an increase in heavy precipitation) is anticipated (Trenberth \cite{trenb1, trenb2}). So, it is of great importance to be able to quantify high-impact hydrologic relationships, for example, the impact that an extreme precipitation (or temperature) in a location has on a surrounding region. Building on the Multivariate Extreme Value Theory we propose a contagion index and a stability index. The contagion index makes it possible to quantify the effect that an exceedance above a high threshold can have on a region. The stability index reflects the expected number of crossings of a high threshold in a region associated to a specific location ${\bf i}$, given the occurrence of at least one crossing at that location. We will find some relations with well-known extremal dependence measures found in the literature, which will provide immediate estimators. For these estimators an application to the annual maxima precipitation in Portuguese regions is presented.

# Keywords:

spatial extremes, max-stable processes, extremal dependence

60G70

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