Mar 26, 2012; 2:02 PM ET
There have been an incredibly high number of weather extremes across the globe over the past decade and scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany have tried to find out whether these events were purely coincidental or a product of climate change.
The research team found a pattern from the many single events and concluded that there was a clear link between human-caused global warming and both extreme rainfall and heat waves. The link was not as clear between particular storms and climate change.
The EurekAlert article lists several of the extreme events.
The research team based their analysis on basic physics, statistical analysis and computer simulations.
A couple of key points from the article from the authors..........
"Single weather extremes are often related to regional processes, like a blocking high pressure system or natural phenomena like El Nino," says Stefan Rahmstorf, co-author of the article and chair of the Earth System Analysis department at PIK. "These are complex processes that we are investigating further. But now these processes unfold against the background of climatic warming. That can turn an extreme event into a record-breaking event."
"The question is whether these weather extremes are coincidental or a result of climate change," says Dim Coumou, lead author of the article. "Global warming can generally not be proven to cause individual extreme events - but in the sum of events the link to climate change becomes clear." This is what his analysis of data and published studies shows. "It is not a question of yes or no, but a question of probabilities," Coumou explains. The recent high incidence of weather records is no longer normal, he says.
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This study was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
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