Emissions Targets Far Too Soft To Prevent Substantial Increase In Extreme US Heatwaves, Record Temps

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WASHINGTON — Targets set by policy makers to slow global warming are too soft to prevent more heatwaves and extreme temperatures in the United States within a few years, with grim consequences for human health and farming, a study warned this week.

Although the United States and more than 100 other countries agreed in Copenhagen last year to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions "so as to hold the increase in global temperature below two degrees Celsius," a study conducted by Stanford University scientists showed that might not be enough.

Stanford earth sciences professor Noel Diffenbaugh and former postdoc fellow Moetasim Ashfaq wrote in the study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, that "constraining global warming to two degrees C above pre-industrial conditions may not be sufficient to avoid dangerous climate change."

"In the next 30 years, we could see an increase in heatwaves like the one now occurring in the eastern United States or the kind that swept across Europe in 2003 that caused tens of thousands of fatalities," said Diffenbaugh, lead author of the study. "Those kinds of severe heat events put enormous stress on major crops like corn, soybean, cotton and wine grapes, causing a significant reduction in yields," he said.

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