Station data are a fundamental source of information about extremes that are used all over the world both to place current events into a historical context and as a basis for the calculation of extreme indices and return values (e.g. Alexander et al., 2006; Donat et al., 2013). These indices have many applications, including the estimation of long-period return values that are used as design criteria for the infrastructure sustaining our everyday lives. However, here are a number of scientific issues associated with the processing of such observations. The first two articles of this special issue, by Avilaetal.(2015) and Bador etal. (2015), contribute to this research area by addressing questions related to the processing of station data and how to relate point scale with regional-scale information. Avila et al. investigate the impact of interpolation methods and gridding, as well as their order, on regional statistics of extremes. They identify that grid resolution has limited effect when considering regional averages, but that the interpolation method and order of operations in the processing of station data can substantially influence the gridded values of extreme-value statistics. Nevertheless, they find that variations in the order of operations do not strongly affect long- term trends and inter-annual variability. Bador et al. investigate for their part the potential for spatial clustering of summer temperature maxima in observational and modeling datasets. The approach they tested yields valid information on extremes, while greatly reducing the size of the data set. It thus opens interesting options for data processing and future analyses of climate extremes.