Climate change was behind this summer's extreme weather
Summer 2018 saw an unprecedented spate of extreme floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires break out across North America, Europe and Asia. The scenes played out on our television screens and in our social media feeds. This is, as I stated at the time, the face of climate change.
It’s not rocket science. A warmer ocean evaporates more moisture into the atmosphere — so you get worse flooding from coastal storms (think Hurricanes Harvey and Florence). Warmer soils evaporate more moisture into the atmosphere — so you get worse droughts (think California or Syria). Global warming shifts the extreme upper tail of the “bell curve” toward higher temperatures, so you get more frequent and intense heat waves (think summer 2018 just about anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere). Combine heat and drought, and you get worse wildfires (again, think California).
The scorching European heat wave this summer, according to one such study, was made more than twice as likely by global warming. The record rainfall in North Carolina from Hurricane Florence was, according to another study, increased by as much as 50 percent by warming oceans.
Just as climate models almost certainly underestimate the impact climate change has already had on such weather extremes, projections from these models also likely underestimate future increases in these types of events. Our study indicates that we can expect many more summers like 2018 — or worse.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-not-rocket-science-climate-change-was-behind-this-summers-extreme-weather/2018/11/02/b8852584-dea9-11e8-b3f0-62607289efee_story.html?utm_term=.d3d469175119
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