Tag Archives: climate change attribution

Climate Change & Sustainability

Who turned the heat up?

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“Emissions increased the chances of seeing a summer as hot as 2017’s by at least a factor of 10”.

According to the New Scientist (pay-walled), that is the kind of information we could soon be getting with our evening weather report.

Better climate models and faster computers will soon give timely information which once took years about the human influence on significant weather events. Climate scientists used to say that it was impossible to attribute any specific weather event to climate change in real time. However, the science of climate attribution has matured. The World Weather Attribution project was able to make the above statement about the weather from June to August in 2017 by the following month in September. Continue reading Who turned the heat up? →

Climate Science

Water, water everywhere

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Well, not everywhere, it’s dry here this winter, but definitely in Texas, and in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and now Pakistan. In fact, in the Indian subcontinent more than 1,400 people are dead since the recent rains started, and more than 45 million are directly affected, many having had their livelihoods destroyed. Mumbai, a city of some 20 million people, had a month’s rain in a single day. Two-thirds of Bangladesh was said to be under water. Here’s an early map from August 29:

Continue reading Water, water everywhere →

Climate Action, Climate Policy & Planning, Climate Science

Climate clippings 185

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1. Linking extreme weather events to climate change

In what is called ‘attribution science’ climate scientists are getting better at analysing how much climate change has influenced particular extreme weather events.

In short, it is no longer a question of weather there is an influence, rather how much.

It would be useful to know, for example, whether the kind of storm that hit South Australia is still a once in 50 years event. Continue reading Climate clippings 185 →

Climate Action, Climate Policy & Planning, Climate Science

Climate clippings 145

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1. Is it climate change?

When the first named cyclone in July appeared off the Queensland coast some asked whether this was caused by climate change. My response would be that a single event is weather. Climate is about changes in the patterns of weather over time.

Carbon Brief has a post suggesting that climate change attribution studies are asking the wrong questions. Continue reading Climate clippings 145 →