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FOX 31 Denver12 hours agoIt’s called "Cheyenne" and it’s a supercomputer in Wyoming that helps the the Pinpoint Weather team predict the forecast. Cheyenne is changing the way meteorologists, scientists and students look at...How long will summerlike heat persist for northeastern US?
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Global warming is sharply raising the risk of 'unprecedented' events
Mashable via Yahoo News4 days agoA boy plays in a fountain in Moscow during a record-shattering heat wave in July, 2010. Image: Kochetkov/EPA/REX...
Global warming is sharply raising the risk of 'unprecedented' events
View photos
Around
the world, global warming is making unprecedented weather and climate
events far more likely to occur, with the planet now teetering on the
edge of a new era of routinely damaging global warming-related extremes,
a new study found.
The study, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
found that in addition to making extreme events more likely across
broad swaths of the globe, climate change is also making such events
more severe.
The
study is rooted in an emerging field of climate detective work, in
which scientists seek to detect the role that human-caused climate
change may have played in often damaging extreme events.
However,
this study differs from many other so-called "climate attribution"
studies by looking at how climate change is tipping the scales in favor
of unprecedented events worldwide, rather than focusing on one or two
extreme occurrences in particular.
Every
weather event that occurs today takes place in an environment modified
by human activities, with more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere making
the air and seas warmer, pumping more moisture into the atmosphere and
providing more energy to storm systems.
As
a result, heat waves are becoming more intense and longer-lasting, and
heavy precipitation events are occurring more frequently in many areas.
View photos
A washed out road in Boulder, Colorado following major flooding in 2013.
Image: Linsley/AP/REX/Shutterstock
The
new study takes such findings a step further by looking at how global
warming is shifting the odds and severity of unprecedented climate
events, such as the historically hottest month, hottest day, driest
year, and wettest 5-day period on record for a given location.
What
the researchers found was surprising: The influence of global warming
is already clear globally, with the greatest certainty concerning hot
weather records.
The
study is important because policy makers and individuals need to make
risk management decisions now to prepare for future climate impacts. And
extreme weather events are some of the most costly ways — both in
monetary terms and human lives — in which climate change is manifesting
itself.
How they did it
The
study is particularly ambitious in that it uses multiple methods to
probe the climate for signs of global warming-related trends, from
statistical examinations of climate data to the use of sophisticated
computer models.
Using
weather observations and a group of climate models known as an
ensemble, the researchers from Stanford University and the University of
California at Los Angeles found that the warming-to-date has already
caused the severity and probability of the hottest month and hottest day
of the year to increase at more than 80 percent of weather observing
sites.
"The
world isn’t at the point where every extreme hot event has a human
component, but it’s getting close,” said Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate
scientist at Stanford University and lead author of the study.
The
study also found that global warming has boosted the probability of the
driest year at 57 percent of studied areas, while the wettest 5-day
period has become more likely at 41 percent of the observed areas.
Diffenbaugh says the lower probabilities associated with precipitation
extremes is due in large part to the greater variability, or
"noisiness," in precipitation data.
As
global warming continues it's becoming easier for locations to set
all-time records, particularly temperature records, because the baseline
climate is shifting so significantly and quickly.
This is similar to a basketball game in which the floor is steadily rising, making it easier for players to dunk the ball.
“With
temperature events the mean [average] warming has been so strong...
that it doesn’t take as big a departure from the new mean to set the
record as it would’ve without that trend,” Diffenbaugh said.
The
tropics have been especially hard-hit by global warming so far, with a
four-fold increase in the probability of setting a record for hottest
month, and at least a factor of 2 increase in the odds of the driest
year.
Kevin
Trenberth, a climate researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric
Research in Boulder, Colorado, said he has "some qualms" about the new
study, but that "it adds to the literature and is useful." Trenberth was
not involved in the new study.
View photos
A boy plays in a fountain in Moscow during a record-shattering heat wave in July, 2010.
Image: Kochetkov/EPA/REX/Shutterstock
He
criticized the computer models used in the study for their inability to
simulate extreme events as well as other models can. "The results seem
quite reasonable, although I suspect they are conservative (low)," he
said in an email.
Katharine
Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University who was not
involved in the new research, said the study focuses on extreme events
that have four different lines of evidence supporting their links to
climate change, including statistically significant historical trends.
"Whenever
an extreme event occurs, the number one question we scientists are
asked is, is this natural or is it human induced climate change? And my
answer always is: there is a human component in nearly every event these
days, and that component is somewhere between zero and 100 percent,"
she said.
Hayhoe
used a human health analogy to help explain the relationship between
global warming and extreme weather and climate events.
"A heart attack is usually some combination of genetic risk and lifestyle choices," she said in an email.
"Similarly,
these days, an extreme event is usually some combination of natural
risk and lifestyle choices – but in this case, what matters is not what
we eat, but rather how we get our energy."
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