Climate change is driving 2022 extreme heat and flooding
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[June 28, 2022]
By Gloria Dickie
LONDON (Reuters) - Extreme weather events –
from scorching heatwaves to unusually heavy downpours – have caused
widespread upheaval across the globe this year, with thousands of people
killed and millions more displaced.
In the last three months, monsoon rains unleashed disastrous flooding in
Bangladesh, and brutal heatwaves seared parts of South Asia and Europe.
Meanwhile, prolonged drought has left millions on the brink of famine in
East Africa.
Much of this, scientists say, is what's expected from climate change.
On Tuesday, a team of climate scientists published a study in the
journal Environmental Research: Climate. The researchers scrutinized the
role climate change has played in individual weather events over the
past two decades.
The findings confirm warnings of how global warming will change our
world - and also make clear what information is missing.
For heatwaves and extreme rainfall, "we find we have a much better
understanding of how the intensity of these events is changing due to
climate change," said study co-author Luke Harrington, a climate
scientist at Victoria University of Wellington.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Jun/28/images/ads/current/humanesociety_sda022411.png)
Less understood, however, is how climate change influences wildfires and
drought.
For their review paper, scientists drew upon hundreds of "attribution"
studies, or research that aims to calculate how climate change affected
an extreme event using computer simulations and weather observations.
There are also large data gaps in many low- and middle-income countries,
making it harder to understand what's happening in those regions, said
co-author Friederike Otto, one of the climatologists leading the
international research collaboration World Weather Attribution (WWA).
HEATWAVES
With heatwaves, it's highly probable that climate change is making
things worse.
"Pretty much all heatwaves across the world have been made more intense
and more likely by climate change," said study co-author Ben Clarke, an
environmental scientist at the University of Oxford.
In general, a heatwave that previously had a 1 in 10 chance of occurring
is now nearly three times as likely — and peaking at temperatures around
1 degree Celsius higher – than it would have been without climate
change.
An April heatwave that saw the mercury climb above 50C (122 Fahrenheit)
in India and Pakistan, for example, was made 30 times more likely by
climate change, according to WWA.
Heatwaves across the Northern Hemisphere in June - from Europe to the
United States - highlight "exactly what our review paper shows … the
frequency of heatwaves has gone up so much," Otto said.
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![](../images/062822PIX/news_h15.jpg)
A girl carries her brother as she wades through a flooded road after
heavy rains, on the outskirts of Agartala, India, June 18, 2022.
REUTERS/Jayanta Dey/File Photo
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Jun/28/images/ads/current/graue_21BLAZER_081621.png)
RAINFALL AND FLOODING
Last week, China saw extensive flooding, following heavy rains. At
the same time, Bangladesh was hit with a flood-triggering deluge.
Overall, episodes of heavy rainfall are becoming more common and
more intense. That's because warmer air holds more moisture, so
storm clouds are "heavier" before they eventually break.
Still, the impact varies by region, with some areas not receiving
enough rain, the study said.
DROUGHT
Scientists have a harder time figuring out how climate change
affects drought.
Some regions have suffered ongoing dryness. Warmer temperatures in
the U.S. West, for example, are melting the snowpack faster and
driving evaporation, the study said.
And while East African droughts have yet to be linked directly to
climate change, scientists say the decline in the spring rainy
season is tied to warmer waters in the Indian Ocean. This causes
rains to fall rapidly over the ocean before reaching the Horn.
WILDFIRE
Heatwaves and drought conditions are also worsening wildfires,
particularly megafires - those that burn more than 100,000 acres.
Fire raged across the U.S. state of New Mexico in April, after a
controlled burn set under "much drier conditions than recognized"
got out of control, according to the U.S. Forest Service. The fires
burned 341,000 acres.
TROPICAL CYCLONES
On a global scale, the frequency of storms hasn't increased.
However, cyclones are now more common in the central Pacific and
North Atlantic, and less so in the Bay of Bengal, western North
Pacific and southern Indian Ocean, the study said.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Jun/28/images/ads/current/charrons_bch_2022.png)
There is also evidence that tropical storms are becoming more
intense and even stalling overland, where they can deliver more rain
on a single area.
So while climate change might not have made Cyclone Batsirai any
more likely to have formed in February, it probably made it more
intense, capable of destroying more than 120,000 homes when it hit
Madagascar.
(Reporting by Gloria Dickie; Editing by Katy Daigle and Lisa
Shumaker)
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