Study: Heatwaves Like PNW 2021 Will Become Common In Decades Ahead; Up To 18C Over Averages
“Record-shattering” heatwaves, even worse than the one that recently hit north-west America, are set to become much more likely in future, according to research. The study is a stark new warning on the rapidly escalating risks the climate emergency poses to lives. The shocking temperature extremes suffered in the Pacific north-west and in Australia 2019-2020 were “exactly what we are talking about”, said the scientists. But they said the world had yet to see anything close to the worst impacts possible, even under the global heating that had already happened.
The research found that highly populated regions in North America, Europe and China were where the record-shattering extremes are most likely to occur. One illustrative heatwave produced by the computer models used in the study showed some locations in mid-northern America having temperatures 18C higher than average. Preparing for such unprecedented extremes was vital, said the scientists, because they could cause thousands of premature deaths, and measures taken to adapt to date had often been based only on previous heat records.
Scientists already know that heatwaves of the kind mostly seen today will become more common as the climate crisis unfolds. But heatwaves are usually analysed by comparing them with the past, which means the vast majority are only marginally hotter than before. This can give a false sense of a gradual rise in record temperatures. It found that heatwaves that smash previous records by roughly 5C would become two to seven times more likely in the next three decades and three to 21 times more likely from 2051–2080, unless carbon emissions are immediately slashed. Such extreme heatwaves are all but impossible without global heating.
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The researchers said the rare record-shattering events in the past had huge impacts, such as the Russian heatwave of 2010, which killed 55,000 people and wiped out $15bn of crops, and the European heatwave of 2003, which led to 70,000 early deaths. “With temperature records being smashed in North America and devastating floods in Europe and China just in the last month, it is clear climate change is affecting the planet,” said Vikki Thompson, at Bristol University in the UK. “The need to understand what could happen in the future is vital to allow us to adapt.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/26/record-shattering-heat-becoming-much-more-likely-says-climate-study
