How much is climate change to blame for extreme weather?

This video was supported by funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

TRANSCRIPT

Maria Temming: In 2021, a historic heat wave baked the Pacific Northwest killing hundreds of individuals and fueling wildfires. Researchers later reported that human-caused climate change made this heat wave as a minimum one hundred fifty times more likely.

But how do scientists figure out how an extraordinarily good deal climate change is to blame for a selected weather event?

Researchers use a decision of techniques for this work, which is in general in general is often called extreme event attribution. One method compares the arena now we have as of late–which has warmed 1.2 degrees Celsius it is able to be because Industrial Revolution –with what the arena would seem as if without climate change. Researchers estimate what that 2nd world would seem as if in keeping with historic trends in weather data and climate models.

Scientists can then see if a selected weather event is more likely or severe for the duration of the 000 world than it should most likely possibly have been in a global without climate change.
One more technique uses computer models to recreate specific weather events.

As an illustration, they'd possibly simulate how powerful a hurricane would have been, if Earth’s oceans were somewhat cooler. If the hurricane would now no longer have been as intense, that would possibly suggest the total heat added to Earth’s oceans by global warming made the 000-life hurricane worse.

Hundreds of studies have investigated the role of global warming in natural mess ups around the arena. And an expansion of have found that climate change made these events more likely or more severe.

Climate change tripled the risk of Hurricane Harvey’s record rainfall over Texas in 2017. It made Australia’s devastating wildfires in 2019 and 2020 as a minimum 30 p.c.more likely. And in some cases, scientists have determined that a weather event would have been virtually not you probably can without climate change, such as a heat wave that cooked Siberia in 2020.

To do attribution studies like these, researchers in general need long-term weather data, models which may realistically simulate Earth’s climate in a undeniable area and a terrific figuring out of the physical processes that drive extreme weather. This makes some different types of extreme weather less complicated to learn about than others.

Heat waves are fairly easy to tie to climate change, because now we have an expansion of long-term temperature records from world wide, and computer models simulate temperature well.

It’s more difficult to make a choice out the fingerprints of climate change on heavy rainfall events in many parts of the arena, because now we have fewer long-term precipitation records, and computer models have a more difficult time rendering this weather.

Meanwhile, tornadoes are in general too small to straight away simulate with existing climate models.

And individual wildfires are specifically not easy to link to climate change, because they rely on many non-weather factors, like land management. Large parts of the arena, including regions in Africa and South The u.s., don’t have the long-term weather records or region-specific climate models to do attribution studies.

So we want more data and better models to better have in mind how climate change is affecting weather in those areas.

This kind of research doesn’t just underscore how climate change is already impacting our every day lives, it'll offer clues concerning the different types of weather we should predict and prepare for as our world continues to warm.