Chaos is the new normal
Extreme weather hitting every continent harder, more often than we’ve ever seen
The warmest July for planet Earth, the warmest May for Alaska. Deadly heat waves in India and Pakistan, then deadly flooding. Flooding in Africa, too. Oh, and 2015 will most likely be the hottest year on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization, the world’s leading body on the state of the Earth’s atmosphere and climate.
So will 2015 go down as the Year of Severe Weather Events?
No, the past 20 years will.
“We have been seeing an uptick in extreme weather events,” said Brett Anderson, a senior meteorologist with AccuWeather in Stormstown, Pa. “There’s heavy rainfall and snow, and then heat waves and long periods of drought.”
Even hurricanes are more intense now, he noted.
The past two decades “have been different — there has been an uptick in extreme (weather) events in the U.S. and all over the world.”
But is climate change the culprit? There is much debate and no definite answer as to whether that’s the case, and if so, to what extent.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in its 2014 report that there is evidence linking extreme events to climate change.
It also said that as warming increases, extreme weather events will probably increase in frequency and intensity.
The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society was more certain: It examined some extreme weather events of 2014, including heat waves, drought, wildfires and floods, and concluded they were definitely linked to climate change.
The report, “Explaining Extreme Events of 2014 from a Climate Perspective,” used research from 32 groups of scientists around the world. It said, for example, that the drought in East Africa, the extreme rainfall in France and the long heat waves on nearly every continent could be linked to climate change.
For David Phillips, Environment Canada’s senior climatologist, the climate clearly has changed and it clearly is warmer everywhere.
“We see more reports of extreme weather events, causing more economic losses,” Phillips said. “It isn’t a one-off.” Buffalo, N.Y., had record snowfall last winter (remember the Polar Vortex?). This year, the city’s first measurable snow came mid-December, breaking a 116-year-old record for lateness.
Even the extremes are different: They are frequent and longer lasting.
In Canada, Phillips said, weather systems “are taking their time walking through us, they are spreading more misery. It’s almost as if they are in slow motion.”
But the link between extreme weather events and climate change is still anecdotal, he said, and it’s hard to say with full confidence that “all this extreme weather is linked to climate change. Scientifically, it has to be very clear and that has kind of not been shown yet.”
On the other hand, scientific breakthroughs have helped curtail fatalities in extreme weather events, Phillips said. The trail of destruction, deaths and economic losses wrought by a 1970s hurricane in Bangladesh still lingers, but since then, the number of people killed in weather events has come down dramatically, he said.
Science has helped with advanced monitoring, forecasting and warning systems. “We know what’s coming days in advance,” Phillips said. Nowadays, he noted, “the oceans can’t burp without us knowing about it.”
And social media adds yet another layer to the debate about extreme weather events and whether they have increased in frequency.
“Tornadoes, floods, rainfall . . . people are recording it all and playing it on social media where everyone sees it. Technology is also playing a role,” said Anderson, who was careful to note, however, that he’s not saying climate change has played no role in extreme weather events.
For Phillips, there is no doubt about that. “But you know what?” he added. “We are also hearing about them more. We know we report them more now, we watch them unfold in real time. The world’s a smaller place now.”