How extreme will weather events become in the second half of the 21st century? This is what a recent study published in Earth’s Future hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated how single weather events could evolve into back-to-back weather events in certain regions of the world. This study has the potential to help researchers, climate scientists, legislators, and the public better understand the long-term consequences of climate change and the steps that can be taken to mitigate them.
For the study, the researchers used a series of computer models to simulate future weather events in the second half of the 21st century, including crop failures, tropical cyclone-induced winds, river floods, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires. While models have long been used to predict future weather events, the goal of this study was to ascertain the societal impact of worsened weather events, as opposed to just evaluating the weather itself. In the end, the researchers determined that droughts, heat waves, and forest fires will increase in regions of the world where vegetation is greatest, and the frequency of extreme weather events will increase. Specific regions of the world the researchers note are the Mediterranean, Latin America, and the Nordic countries.
Present day (left) and future predictions (right) of extreme weather displaying isolated events (blue) and back-to-back events (red). (Credit: Gabriele Messori)
“We have long known, for example, that there will be more heatwaves, forest fires and severe droughts in many regions – that in itself is no surprise. What surprised us is that the increase is so large that we see a clear paradigm shift with multiple coinciding extreme events becoming the new normal,” said Dr. Gabriele Messori, who is a Professor in Meteorology in the Department of Earth Sciences at Uppsala University and lead author of the study.
How will weather events worsen in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Earth’s Future, EurekAlert!