Exploring the links between climate change and extreme weather

Climate change is a problem that affects many countries, if not all, in the world today. Some are exploring climate-smart solutions to this largely ignored existential threat.

Sadly, the awareness of the dangers inherent in ignoring this threat to humanity’s continued existence is low with the few responses from governments and nations ranging from apathy, wariness to disdain.

For example, Nigerian climate scientists and newsrooms are not able to fulfill their obligation to call attention to the global challenge. This is due to a variety of factors, most notably funding.

Attribution science is a new niche that a few scientists around the world are exploring to fill the information gap.

Climate change, Nigerian story

Climate change refers to the long-term, significant changes in the Earth’s climate. It can occur through natural causes, or as a direct result of human activities.

Climate change is happening. impacted Nigeria negatively The changes in the last few decades have not been as dramatic as in other parts.

Nigeria has experienced the worst effects of global warming, including low crop yields, food shortages, reduced livestock production and loss of income.

The Nigerian government has implemented policies to combat climate change. These include the National Environmental Policy and National Drought and Desertification Policy as well as the National Forest Policy and National Erosion and Flood Control Policy.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported How Nigerian farmers are using climate-smart strategies to combat the effects climate change.

Also, this newspaper reported on how farmers in the nation’s capital now use organic pesticides to fight the scourge of climate change.

Other than this, some of these climate agroforestry models are also being actively used by some ofThese farmers.

Attribution science

Over the past few months, scientists from around the world have taken up the challenge of helping the world better understand climate change phenomena using science as a vehicle for interpretation.

Scientists now use raw data, a bit of maths, and some intuition to find possible connections between climate change and extreme weather events.

Climate refers a pattern of weather in an area over a long time. Weather refers t he atmosphere at a particular time and place. This can be described in terms humidity, air pressure, moisture, temperature, wind speed, and any precipitation (rain or snow).

Weather describes the actual conditions that can occur at any given time and place. It is not the same as climate, which is a description about the conditions that are more likely to occur in particular places. Regions During a specific month or season.

Extreme weather refers specifically to turbulent events such as heatwaves. Thunderstorms. Droughts. Wildfires. Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Floods. These events usually end in tragedy.

Because of the low level of technical knowledge, it was often difficult for people to determine if extreme weather events are directly related to climate change.

Scientists are now using attribution science to help answer these questions.

Climate scientists today can use data and computer models from certain regions to determine how climate change has or has not affected weather-related tragic events.

These scientists are going even deeper to seek answers to climate change questions by developing more computer models to not only analyse climate data with maths but find simpler ways to “quantify, or measure, the impacts of climate change’’.

Carbon Brief, a U.K. site, recently reported on how climate scientists mapped over 350 peer reviewed studies of weather extremes across the globe and analysed trends.

The scientists found out, for instance, that extreme events have increased in the last 10 to 15 years with 70 per cent of 405 extreme weather events “made more likely or more intense by human-induced climate change.’’

They also found that 92% of the 122 attribution studies of extreme heat concluded that climate change has made them (heat), more likely or worse. They noted too that 58 per cent of 81 rainfall studies found that human activities “made them more probable or intense and 65 per cent of 69 drought events were worsened by climate change…”

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‘Finding answers’

Meanwhile, Friederike Otto, Senior Lecturer in Climate Science, at the Imperial College London, during a lecture ‘Attributing Extreme Weather’, last week with a group of global scholars, journalists and activists, said the field has put climate science ‘on the offensive’ in the discourse on climate change.

Ms Otto spoke to the members of the initial cohort of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network (OCJN), a group that includes professionals from more than 60 countries.

Tosin Omoniyi was a PREMIUM TIMES editor at the Standards Desk. He was one of two Nigerian journalists who were selected to join the fellowship along with others from the U.S.A, Canada, Poland, Argentina and China.

The Oxford Climate Journalism Network addresses some of the problems journalists face when reporting on global warming and helps editors and news media executives to develop their approaches. The Reuters Institute for Journalism Studies at the University of Oxford has a new programme called the OCJN.

Funded for the first year by a £477,170 grant from the European Climate Foundation (ECF), the project is led by two co-founders, the Reuters Institute’s deputy director, Meera Selva, and visiting fellow and advisory board member, Wolfgang Blau.

Premium Times’ editor selected for Oxford global climate reporting network

In her comments, Mrs Otto explained how attribution science tries to bridge the information gap regarding the link between human-induced global warming and extreme weather.

‘’When we talk about climate change in the media, particularly in the policy domain, it is usually talking about global mean temperature, and future climate change, keeping to global mean temperature goals agreed to at the Paris Agreement…we talk about climate change as if everything is fine until we reach these temperature goals. Everything is fine up until 1.5 degrees is reached, then the world will end. This, of course, is not what climate change is,” she said.

She said climate change manifests primarily “through the changing risks and intensity of extreme weather events and sea-level rise’’.

“So, the warmer it gets, the more these events change and so it is a gradual change. It has been long since begun. We have been living in an era of loss, and damage for a long time. For decades, people have been dying as a result of the effects of climate change. We don’t have an inventory of these so we don’t know exactly what they are but we do know they happened. We are also able to pinpoint the role of climate change in individual extreme events.’’

On attribution science, she adds: “So, we can’t say this was climate change, yes or no. But what we can say now (with attribution science) is whether and to what extent human-induced climate change has altered the likelihood of an event to occur…and while this is not always straightforward to study in detail, the idea behind this study and how this science works is not very complicated…’’

How useful can attribution science really be?

Experts say that attribution science can offer great insight into the impacts of Climate change around the globe

It can help educate, prepare and influence global communities as they face climate change. However, it is also providing useful data and science-based answers to difficult questions.

It has also been used as a tool to resolve legal issues relating to climate justice.

The Sabin Centre for Climate Change Law, and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory have established the Climate Attribution Database.

The database includes 385 scientific resources that revolve around climate change attribution and extreme event attribution. These resources are expected to help scientists link attribution science with existing laws and policies.

It also allows lawyers who deal with climate change-related litigation to access resources that could aid their cases.

Attribution science has shown that many extreme weather events have been convincingly linked to climate change. It is becoming easier to link specific sources of emissions to these events.

Michael Burger, executive director at the Sabin Centre, stated that a Dutch court ordered Shell, via a form of a decree, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the combustion of fossil fuel products by 45 percent by 2030. “source attribution.”

The Philippines’ Commission on Human Rights also determined that fossil fuel companies have a responsibility under a Philippines human rights law to reduce the emissions that result from their products and services.

Experts say attribution science is now making it possible “to quantify increased risks, and this will likely result in more lawsuits in the future.”

It remains to be seen, however, how science can help the world better understand this existential threat and address it.