Extreme Heat and Heavy Rain Events Expected to Double

Extreme weather events such as droughts, heat waves and torrential rainfalls are the most powerful and obvious reminders that the climate is changing. These disasters were happening long before humans started pumping heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but global warming has tipped the odds in their favor. A devastating heat wave like the one that killed 35,000 people in Europe in 2003, for example, is now more than 10 times more likely than it used to be.

But that’s just a single event in a single place, which doesn’t say much about the world as a whole. A new analysis in Nature Climate Change, however, takes a much broader view. About 18 percent of heavy precipitation events worldwide and 75 percent of hot temperature extremes — defined as events that come only once in every thousand days, on average — can already be attributed to human activity, says the study. And as the world continues to warm, the frequency of those events is expected to double by 2100.

The new research differs from other so-called extreme event attribution studies, not just in its broad-brush approach, but also in how the term “extreme” is defined.

http://www.weather.com/news/climate/news/climate-change-extreme-heat-heavy-rain-events-double