A new United Nations report projects man-made global warming will boost the damage caused by heat waves, coastal floods, and droughts as they get worse by the end of the century.
In a press release about the report, Special Report for Managing the
A new United Nations report projects man-made global warming will boost the damage caused by heat waves, coastal floods, and droughts as they get worse by the end of the century.
In a press release about the report, Special Report for Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX), Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change Co-Chair Qin Dahe expressed high confidence that temperatures have increased due to man-made global warming. The study further expressed medium confidence that droughts had increased in some areas as a result of man-made climate change. However, the researchers could not draw firm conclusions about the effects of climate change on any trends in hurricanes, typhoons, hailstorms, or tornadoes. (The full report detailing the scientific work behind the study will not be released until February.)
It is generally agreed that the average temperatures over land have increased by about 1° Celsius[PDF] since the 1950s. Looking toward the end of the 21st century, the report relies on computer model projections which suggest that 1-in-20 year hottest day events are to become a 1-in-2 year events. The report also projects that inundations that once happened every 20 years are likely to occur every five years.
Sounds bad, but that’s a hundred years from now. With regard to the next few decades, the researchers more sanguinely report, “Projected changes in climate extremes under different emissions scenarios generally do not strongly diverge in the coming two to three decades, but these signals are relatively small compared to natural climate variability over this time frame. Even the sign of projected changes in some climate extremes over this time frame is uncertain.” That means that weather extremes for the next several decades will likely be within the limits of natural variation, making it almost impossible to discern any effect of man-made climate change on them. In other words, whatever weather disasters do occur will not be o