Global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions “most likely” exacerbated the intense rains that lashed the UAE and Oman last week, causing deaths and widespread flooding, an expert group of scientists has found.
The World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international group of scientists that investigates extreme weather events, said climate change caused by fossil fuel emissions is the probable reason but cannot be pinpointed “with certainty”.
The study compiled by 21 international researchers found extreme rainfall in El Nino years has become 10-40 percent heavier in the region affected.
“Warming, caused by burning fossil fuels, is the most likely explanation for the increasing rainfall,” WWA said in the study published on Thursday. “There are no other known explanations” for the sharp rise in precipitation, the group added.
Twenty-one people died in Oman and four in the United Arab Emirates, which was battered by the heaviest rainfall since records began for the desert Gulf state 75 years ago.
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The oil-producing states have been experiencing extreme heat brought on by global warming. But last week’s floods revealed the additional risk of exceptional weather events as the planet heats up.
“The UAE and Oman floods have shown that even dry regions can be strongly affected by precipitation events, a threat that is increasing with increasing global warming due to fossil fuel burning,” said Sonia Seneviratne, a WWA member and professor at Zurich’s ETH university.
The WWA study analysed historic weather data and climate models to determine changes in rainfall patterns in the area, including in the years affected by El Nino, a climate pattern that describes the unusual warming of surface waters in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.
It found extreme rains were significantly less intense in the years before 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2F) of warming above pre-industrial levels.
Story was adapted from Aljazeera.
