An annual report by top climate scientists and meteorologists has shown how climate change drove unprecedented heat waves, floods and droughts in recent years.
The report from the American Meteorological Society (AMS) compiles the leading science about the role of climate change in extreme weather.
“It’s a reminder that the risk of extreme events is growing, and they’re affecting every corner of the world,” says Sarah Kapnick, the chief scientist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
According to reports, the Earth is already about 2 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than it was in the late 1800s and scientists warn that humans must cut greenhouse gas emissions in half this decade to avoid catastrophic warming later this century.
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One way to understand and predict the effects of a hotter Earth is to look for the fingerprints of climate change on extreme weather events such as floods, heat waves and droughts.
The last decade is said to have seen huge leaps forward for the field known as extreme-event attribution science, which uses statistics and climate models to detect global warming’s impact on weather disasters.
Reports showed that the extreme drought in California and Nevada in 2021, for example, was six times more likely because of climate change.
“Extreme heat events are more extreme than ever,” said Stephanie Herring, one of the authors of the report and a scientist at NOAA. “Research is showing they’re likely to become the new normal in the not so distant future.”
Recall that In October 2021, parts of South Korea experienced average temperatures that were 7 degrees Fahrenheit higher than average. In the past, that would have been an exceedingly rare heat wave – something that would never occur twice in a millennium, let alone in a person’s lifetime.
But scientists found that if humans do not dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such heat waves in South Korea will be the new norm by 2060.
Story was adapted from WJCT News.
