Report: Climate change worsens extreme weather events
By Dan Vergano and Doyle Rice, USA TODAY
Updated 11h 23m ago
Heat waves, floods and other extreme weather worsen with global warming, suggests a major international climate report released today.
- By Aaron Favila, APA man swims in neck-deep floodwaters in Bangkok, Thailand on Nov. 9. Disastrous flooding like what's occuring in Thailand should worsen due to global warming, according to a report released today from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
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By Aaron Favila, AP
A man swims in neck-deep floodwaters in Bangkok, Thailand on Nov. 9. Disastrous flooding like what's occuring in Thailand should worsen due to global warming, according to a report released today from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, obtained in draft form by USA TODAY, stresses that expanding cities and populations worldwide, also raise the odds of severe impacts from weather disasters.
"Unprecedented extreme weather and climate events" look likely in coming decades as a result of a changing climate, says the draft report. The final version was released early today by IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri at a meeting hosted by report sponsors, the World Meteorological Organization and United Nations Environment Programme, in Kampala, Uganda.
The IPCC and other scientific groups, such as the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, have reconfirmed over the past decade that greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels, and deforestation, have led to a 1.4-degree rise in average global-surface-temperatures worldwide in the past century. That rise, the IPCC says, is likely to increase, with at least 2-in-3 odds that climate extremes have already worsened because of man-made greenhouse gases.
"The time is now for this report," says University of Illinois climate scientist Don Wuebbles, pointing to recent studies linking climate change to extreme weather. " Scientific studies such as a report in the journal Nature, for example, have linked the deadly 2003 heat wave in Europe to climate change. The IPCC report's projection for the next century:
•Worse heat waves worldwide are "very likely."
•"Medium confidence" exists that droughts will worsen across southern North America, the Mediterranean and elsewhere.
•"High confidence" exists that economic losses from weather disasters are increasing, with huge year-to-year swings, largely due to more people, urbanization and coastal development.
The report is noteworthy for pointing to over-development as the driver for increasing dollar losses from extreme weather events, not climate change, says the University of Colorado's Roger Pielke Jr., a past critic of IPCC reports.
"It's dangerous to blame every extreme weather event on climate change," says Weather Underground meteorologist Jeff Masters, adding that it's often hard to make the case for a connection between one and the other. Even so, Masters says, that climate change is increasing the chances of floods, droughts and heat waves.
This year, there have been 14 billion-dollar U.S. weather disasters, according to global reinsurance firm Aon Benfield, shattering the previous record of nine set in 2008.
Tornadoes, hurricanes and floods in these 14 disasters killed more than 600 people, reports Masters.
