[ad_1]
Want climate news in your inbox? Register here for Climate Fwd:, our e-newsletter.
In Chicago, officials warned of the risk of almost instant frostbite at what could be the coldest day in the city. Warming centers have opened around the Midwest. And schools and universities were closed throughout the region while rare polar winds were blowing from the Arctic.
At the same time, on the other side of the planet, forest fires raged under the record heats of Australia. The skyrocketing of air conditioners uses overloaded electrical networks and causes many power outages. Authorities slowed down and canceled trams to save energy. TheThe leaders called for laws that would require business to close when temperatures have reached dangerous levels: near 116 degrees Fahrenheit, or 47 degrees Celsius, as was the case last week in Adelaide, capital of South Australia.
It's the weather at the age of the extremes. It comes over multiple extremes, of all kinds, in all kinds of places.
"When something happens – that it's a cold snap, a forest fire, a hurricane, etc. – we have to think about it. beyond what we've seen in the past and badume that there is a high probability that it's worse ever seen, "said Crystal A. Kolden, badociate professor at the University of Idaho, a specialist in Forest fires and currently working in Tasmania during one of the worst fire seasons of the state.
Take these recent examples: the heat recordings were reversed Norway to Algeria last year. In parts of Australia, the drought has been so long that a kindergarten child will barely see the rain in his lifetime. And California has experienced its most ruinous wildfires in its history in 2018, triggering this week a bankruptcy on the part of the state's largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric.
Is it climate change?
Extremes of heat and drought are in line with scientific consensus: more greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere increase the risks of abnormally high temperatures. In general, according to scientists, a warmer planet makes extreme weather conditions more frequent and intense.
the real life the numbers corroborate climate models. Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are higher than they have been for 800,000 years and global average temperatures have increased. According to the World Meteorological Organization, the last four years have been the hottest ever recorded. The 20 hottest years ever recorded have all been recorded in the last 22 years. Ocean temperatures have broken records for several consecutive years.
As for the extremely low temperatures this week in some parts of the United States, they contrast sharply with trend to warmer winters. They can also be the result of a warming, strangely enough.
Emerging research suggests that Arctic warming is causing changes in the jet stream and pushing polar air into unusual and often unprepared latitudes. Hence the atypical cold of this week on large areas of the Northeast and Midwest.
Friederike Otto, a researcher on climatology at Oxford University, who is studying how global warming exacerbates particular meteorological phenomena, said that while all these extreme events can not be attributed to climate change, the profound changes taking place produce in the atmosphere of the Earth increase "the probability of a large number of extreme events. "
"It means that it becomes crucial to understand where your community is vulnerable and it may be something that does not on the agenda without climate change, "she said.
Take Chicago, for example. The dangers of heat have gained momentum two decades ago, when a five-day heat wave in the summer of 1995 killed hundreds of people, especially those who lived alone. . The city has developed a plan of action against the heat. He has planted thousands of trees, set up district air conditioning centers and created a text messaging system so that people can ask city officials to control vulnerable people.
Extreme heat, however, is the biggest problem as a whole.
Heat records have been beaten twice as often as cold records in the United States since the 2000s.
A recent study by PLOS Medicine predicted a five-fold increase in the number of heat-related deaths in the United States by 2080. The outlook for less wealthy countries is worse; in the Philippines, researchers predict 12 times more deaths. Extreme heat is already devastating the health and livelihoods of tens of millions of people, particularly in South Asia.
Extreme heat also affects the nutritional value of many crops. Even some of our most precious indulgences, like coffee, are in danger with rising temperatures.
This year, heat has been a problem in the northern and southern hemispheres. In Alaska, warmer temperatures than usual forced the cancellation of dog sled raceswhile the cities of New Zealand, where the weather is generally so mild that most homes do not have heating or air conditioning, have broken heat records. Tuesday, Wellington, the capital, has exceeded 87 degrees Fahrenheit, the record since the beginning of record keeping in 1927, and Hamilton has reached the peak of 91 degrees, the highest since the records began in 1940.
Bob Henson, meteorologist at Weather Underground, a forecasting servicesaid that, in order to prepare for the impact of climate change on climate, "we must be ready for a wider range of possibilities".
Some preparation is related to resilience. Mayors promise to make their cities more resilient to climate change after one disaster or another. Scientists are experimenting with crop seeds that are more resistant to the vagaries of extreme heat and drought.
Dr. Kolden, a fire specialist, noted that as a species we are proud to be resilient. But this human trait can also have a disadvantage. That's why often, even when officials tell us to evacuate a fire zone or a floodplain, we do not do it. We are thinking of doing it because we have already done it. Or that forecasters are wrong.
"In our DNA, we have this extreme resilience," said Dr. Kolden. "It ends up being our loss from changing conditions."
Livia Albeck-Ripka and Charlotte Graham-McLay contributed to the story.
For more information on the climate and the environment, follow @NYTClimate on Twitter.
[ad_2]
Source link
