Heat Waves: Climate change has soared heat records

The biggest problem with climate change is not how the Earth is warming, but how fast it is warming. An example of this theory is now provided by the study of the most extreme of extreme heat waves – those that not only surpass previous records, but “crush” them, as noted by climate researchers Erich Fischer, Sebastian Sipple of ETH Zurich. And Reto Nutti had put it. this. According to their analysis, which is now published in “Nature Climate Change.” The likelihood of heat waves in North America, which beat the previous record by five degrees, increases with the rate of temperature rise.

Accordingly, in the RCP8.5 scenario with high greenhouse gas emissions, the probability of a heat wave that exceeds the previous record – not the average – by at least two standard deviations increases more than fourfold by 2050. In Central Europe, one standard deviation corresponds to approximately 1.2 to 1.4 degrees. For example, the 2003 heat wave, which killed more than 70,000 people, was a 2.5 sigma record. By 2080, the likelihood of a two-sigma record occurring anywhere in the temperate latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere will be about 50 percent each year, the team predicts.

The main thing is that such potentially catastrophic events Which would be almost impossible without climate change – behave differently from normal heat waves. As a result of climate change, higher temperatures generally occur more frequently as it is warming around the world. For example, if the global average temperature were one degree higher, a heat wave that typically occurs every 1000 years might instead occur every 100 years. However, a new record usually only improves the old one by a small margin, such as a record in play. Higher temperatures also make temperature records more frequent, as many maximum values come from cooler reference periods, but if average temperatures remain constant at higher values, they will become rarer over time.