Thursday, March 28, 2024

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Scientists have warned that every heatwave experienced today has become more intense and more likely due to climate collapse.

A review of extreme weather hazards showed that for some extreme weather hazards, such as heat waves, they were “clearly” worsening due to global warming, and that the impact in terms of loss of life and financial cost was underestimated.

For other factors, such as tropical cyclones, there are differences between regions and the role that climate change plays in each event.

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But comments from scientists at Oxford University, Imperial College London and Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand say the severe drought in many parts of the world is not caused by climate change.

Extreme weather events linked to climate change have caused massive deaths and billions of pounds in damages in recent decades, the study is published in the journal Environmental Studies: Climate Say.

The review looks at information from the latest report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as well as the results of a growing body of attribution studies that use weather observations and climate models to determine the contribution of global warming to specific events. effect.

It focuses on changes to five hazards — heatwaves, rainfall-based floods, tropical cyclones, wildfires and droughts — and the impact of specific recent events, which the researchers say is the starting point for an inventory of the impacts and costs of climate change.

Study co-author Dr Frederick Otto from Imperial College London said an “absolute” climate collapse had already made heatwaves more likely and more intense.

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“We can say with great confidence that every heatwave that happens today is more intense and more likely due to climate change.

“How likely is it that local factors such as land-use change could change, but there is no doubt that climate change is an absolute game-changer when it comes to heatwaves,” she said.

She said it is no longer necessary to wait for the attribution studies she helped pioneer on individual heatwaves to know that they are driven by climate change.

In the UK, people have considered building flood defences to accommodate global warming, but the big change in the UK in terms of climate change is heatwaves – extreme heat is deadly, she said.

But in other extreme cases, such as droughts, the role of climate change is overestimated.



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