Experts assess the impact of climate change on every heatwave

Experts on the impact of climate change upon extreme weather stated Wednesday that all heatwaves today have the unmistakable, measurable fingerprint of global heating.

Burning fossil fuelsDestruction of forests has also resulted in enough greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere to increase the frequency, intensity, and frequency of floods, droughts, and wildfires. Tropical stormsThey detailed their findings in a state of science report.

Friederike Otto, a Grantham Institute scientist at Imperial College London, stated that “there is no doubt” that climate change has the potential to transform extreme heat.

Extreme heat spells like the one that hit South Asia in March/April are already the most fatal. extreme eventsShe added.

“Every heatwave in this world is now strengthened and more likely to occur because of human-caused global climate change,” Otto and Ben Clarke, University of Oxford, stated in the report. The report was presented as a briefing document for the conference. News media.

Evidence of global heating’s impact on Extreme weatherThe evidence has been mounting for decades. But, only recently was it possible to answer the most obvious question: To what extent was climate change responsible for a particular event?

Scientists have been able to say that an unusually severe hurricane or flood, or heatwave, was consistent with general predictions about how global warming would affect weather.

The news media, however, sometimes ignored climate change or attributed a weather catastrophe entirely to rising temperatures.

With more data and better tools, however, Otto and other pioneers of a field known as event attribution science have been able to calculate—sometimes in near realtime—how much more likely or intense a particular storm or hot spell has become due to global warming.

Courtroom evidence

Otto and colleagues in the World Weather Attribution (WWA) consortium, for example, concluded that the heatwave that gripped western North America last June—sending temperatures in Canada to a record 49.6 C (121 F)—would have been “virtually impossible” without human-induced climate change.

Otto said that while the heatwave that scorched India last month and Pakistan is still being investigated by AFP, the bigger picture is alarmingly clear.

“What we see in terms of Extreme heat“Will be very normal, even cool in a 2-degree or 3-degree Celsius world,” she said. Global temperatures above preindustrial levels.

The world has warmed to 1.2C thus far.

This increase led to record-setting rainfall and flooding in Germany and Belgium last month, which resulted in more than 200 deaths. It was nine times more likely than usual, according to the WWA.

Global warming is not always to blame.

Experts have reported that the two-year drought in southern Madagascar that led to near famine conditions was actually caused by natural variability of the weather.

Real-world policy implications result from quantifying the impact of global heating on extreme weather events with peer-reviewed methods.

For example, attribution studies have been used in landmark climate litigation in the United States and Australia.

In Saul Luciano Lliuya V. RWE AG, a Peruvian farmer sues the German energy giant for the cost of preventing floods from a glacial lake. Climate change.

A scientific analysis concluded that human-caused Global warmingDirectly responsible for creating the “critical threat” to a devastating outburst, placing a city of around 120,000 people in danger of flooding.

© 2022 AFP