Get ready for another 4 years of heatwaves

STIFLING heatwaves are likely to be a feature of the global climate for at least the next four years, scientists say.

Both average ground and sea surface temperatures could be abnormally high, which may in turn increase the likelihood of tropical storms.

The research was carried out before this summer’s heatwaves that sent temperatures in the UK and other parts of the world soaring.

But the unusually hot weather was correctly predicted by the same scientists in January – who said 2018 had a ‘high probability of having a warm anomaly’, relative to the general effects of global warming. The new technique, called Procast (‘probabilistic forecast’), seeks to make sense of chaotic phenomena such as the Earth’s climate by examining data from previous changes to make predictions.

A retrospective test of the method accurately predicted the global warming pause between 1998 and 2013.

The scientists, led by Dr Florian Sevellec from the University of Brest in France, wrote in the journal Nature Communications: ‘For 2018-2022, the probabilistic forecast indicates a warmer than normal period, with respect to the forced trend [of global warming].

‘The coming warm period is associated with an increased likelihood of intense to extreme temperatures.’

‘Extreme temperatures’