Extreme Weather and Climate Change


UCS/via

We can’t blame climate change for every extreme weather event that slams into us, yet there’s little doubt among scientists that global warming is exacerbating heat waves, flooding, drought, and rainstorms. To illustrate that point, the Union of Concerned Scientists put together a handy little graphic that demonstrates which types of extreme weather scientists are confident that global warming is driving.

Note to the mainstream press: Memorize this. (And click here for the full-sized image)

This summer, a record-breaking heatwave has swept much of the United States, as you might know if you happen to live in much of the United States. Scientists have been unusually forthright in linking the sweltering temps to climate change, as prominent climatologists have come forward and said things like “this is a what global warming looks like.”

In the scientific community, that’s a pretty uncontroversial statement—there’s plenty of evidence that rising global temperatures, spurred by a still-growing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, will lead to more heat waves and coastal flooding. But the jury’s still out on how precisely hurricanes and tornadoes are influenced by climate change.

Here’s the UCS for the final word on their chart:

  • What’s the connection between global warming and extreme weather? When it comes to heat waves and coastal flooding, the scientific evidence is clear: Human-caused climate change is increasing these extreme weather events.
  • Other forms of severe weather are also closely linked to climate change, including a rise in extreme precipitation events in some regions and increasingly severe droughts in others.
  • The effect of climate change on tornadoes and hurricanes is an active area of research. Scientific confidence with observed data is currently low, though the underlying mechanisms of climate change are expected to play a role.

For more info on the science backing the above claims, go here.

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This entry was written by jcwinnie, posted on 2012-7-18 at 7:45 am, filed under climate, forecast, human rights, safety, survival and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

2 Comments

  1. jcwinnie
    Posted 2012-7-24 at 7:35 pm | Permalink

    Kevin S. Curtis wants us to talk about the weather.
    Cross-posted from National Journal.

    Most of us talk about the weather every day. And lately, there’s been a lot to talk about. In the U.S. alone, we lived through record-setting heat waves, extreme storms, and crippling drought that set the stage for damaging forest fires.

    Bad weather is nothing new. But it’s getting worse — and the uncomfortable fact is that it’s manmade.

    This week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its 2011 State of the Climate Report. For good reason, this report made a lot of news. It found that much of the recent extreme weather we’ve seen is almost certainly tied to manmade climate change.

    For instance, in La Niña years like 2011, extreme heat waves like the one we saw in Texas are now 20 times more likely than before. Last year’s warm November in the United Kingdom (the second-warmest on record) was 62 times more likely to happen.

    These kinds of extreme heat waves are happening all over the world. And the reason is clear: Manmade pollution from greenhouse gases is warming the atmosphere. NOAA found that in 2011, the greenhouse gas concentration for the first time exceeded 390 parts per million. Weather events that would otherwise be occasional, freak occurrences are now becoming commonplace.

    And let’s be clear: The scientific evidence is not in question. NOAA’s report is simply the latest word from the scientists that manmade pollution is increasing the risks of wild weather. These risks were also laid out in last year’s comprehensive report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Lately, the weather has been so bad that even Rupert Murdoch admitted that climate change is real.

    This is often the point when climate deniers throw up their hands and say even if climate change is happening, there’s no way of knowing if humans are responsible. That simply isn’t true. Scientists have demonstrated over and over again that the steady rise in carbon pollution has been the primary cause of the steady rise in global temperatures since the mid-20th century. There’s no evidence that natural causes, such as volcanoes or solar activity, have played a significant role since then.

    At this point in human history, we do more than talk about the weather — we’re actually influencing it. We know the solution. We need to end our dependence on dirty sources of energy like oil, coal and gas.(My emphasis)

  2. jcwinnie
    Posted 2012-7-27 at 8:27 pm | Permalink

    Huffington Post also had a post on Extreme Weather’s Link To Climate Change Becoming Clearer

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