Human-caused climate change is at the heart of global crisis

PEOPLE blame the gods or fate for drought and storms – but the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) yesterday blamed global warming caused by us.

WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas said worrying new record temperatures were a result of “humancaused climate change”.

The United Nations’s authoritative voice on weather, climate and water said this week that 2016 was the “hottest year on record, about 1.1°C above pre-industrial era (temperatures)”.

The WMO’s statement comes at a time when gales and lightning storms have battered the eastern half of the province.

In January, extreme weather killed five people, destroyed hundreds of homes and damaged 105 schools.

The WMO said: “Throughout 2016, there were many extreme weather events which caused huge socio-economic disruption and losses.”

“A very powerful warming El Niño event fuelled high temperatures in the early months of 2016.

“But even after the end of El Niño, temperatures remained well above average,” said Taalas.

In September, the WMO said the widest lightning flash ever was recorded in Oklahoma, USA. It spanned 321km, while the longest flash, of 7.74 seconds, was measured zapping the Provence Alpes-Côte d’Azur administrative area in France.

“Lightning is a major weather hazard that claims many lives each year,” Taalas said.

For the first time, lightning is being included for study and by the WMO’s climatology commission which looks for world records for heat, cold, wind and rain.

WMO spokeswoman Clare Nullis told Saturday Dispatch: “Global warming is certainly linked to an increase in intense heat and heatwaves.”

She pointed to research published in the journal Science in which authors David M Romps, Jacob T Seeley, David Vollaro and John Molinari found that in 2014 lightning strikes would increase in the US by 5% per °C of global warming “and by about 50% over this century”.

SA Weather Service spokesman in Port Elizabeth, Garth Sampson, said he did not know if the province’s drought was linked to global warming “but climate change (science) says droughts and floods will be more extreme”.

The WMO said globally averaged temperature in 2016 was 0.83°C above the longterm average of 14°C and 0.07°C warmer than the previous record set in 2015.

WMO uses data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the UK’s Meterological Office Hadley Centre, the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts and the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Taalas added that “the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average”. — mikel@dispatch.co.za