Researchers have developed what is described as a new mathematical solution to analyse how emission-intensive actors are responsible for increasing climate damage.
Gottfried Kirchengast, climate researcher and his team at the University of Graz in Austria have developed a new method for computing the hazards from extreme events such as heat waves, floods and droughts.
Using a new mathematical solution, the model can be used to compute the frequency, duration, intensity, spatial extent and other variables of extreme events. This allows researchers to analyse the extent to which emission-intensive actors such as states or companies are responsible for increasing climate damages and risks.
“If suitable long-term climate data are available, the development of climate hazard metrics for extremes of interest can be tracked year by year and decade by decade – in European countries and any other region worldwide,” says Kirchengast.
Researchers used the new method to investigate changes in extreme heat events in Austria and across Europe, using datasets of daily maximum temperatures from 1961 to 2024.
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The threshold for “extreme” was taken as the temperature at each location that exceeded the daily values in the period from 1961 to 1990 by one per cent. For Austria, this was 30°C, in southern Spain it was over 35°C and in Finland it was around 25°C.
The study, published in the journal Weather and Climate Extremes, found that the total extremity of heat in Austria and most regions of Central and Southern Europe has increased about tenfold in the current climate period from 2010-2024 compared to 1961-1990
“This massive increase in the total extremity metric goes far beyond its natural variability and shows the influence of human-made climate change with a clarity that even I as a climate researcher have never seen before,” says Kirchengast.
Story was adapted from euro news.
