You may have noticed that weather events such as severe heatwaves and severe floods have often been making headlines. When such events happen, scientists are invariably asked, “Is climate change to blame?” A decade ago, scientists cautioned against making such attribution. They would dismiss the question by saying.
There’s no science to tell us whether climate change contributed to this specific event. But today, they have the science, the computer model and the research methodology to connect climate change to the extreme weather events
Investigating links between climate change and extreme weather is known as Attribution Science. Such studies can be tricky- but not impossible.
Attribution Science is a relatively new field, which is thought to have emerged 10 years ago. In 2011, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists published a study concluding that human-caused climate change played a role in five of the six extreme weather events analysed. Such studies, called the “Explaining Extreme Events” report, have been published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society every year since.
Scientists first define an extreme event’s magnitude and frequency based on observational data. Then they use computer climate models and compare those models results with observational data. Based on these calculations, scientists quantify the impact of climate change. Attribution Science helps scientists not only to test whether climate change is responsible for a particular extreme weather event, but also to ascertain the magnitude of its impact.
What is climate change?
Climate refers to weather conditions that typically exist in one area over a long period of time. Climate change is the long term, significant change observed in the climate of Earth. It can happen naturally or in response to human activities, which include the burning of fossil fuels and clearing of forests. Climate change may lead to extreme weather events such as heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes and floods.
Picture Credit : Google
