Heatwaves likely 'every other year' by 2030s, says Met Office study

Torrid European summers like the one in 2003 which claimed an estimated 70,000 lives are set to become a regular occurrence within two decades and the “new normal” by the end of the century, according to a new Met Office study.

The climate modelling, which was published in Nature Climate Change on Monday, foresees a dramatic rise in the chance of severely hot weather patterns in central Europe and the Mediterranean, if greenhouse gas emissions continue along their current path.

“Extremely warm summers that would occur twice a century in the early 2000s are now expected to happen twice a decade,” said Dr Nikos Christidis, the lead author of the new paper. “The chances of heatwaves as extreme as seen in 2003 have increased from about one-in-1,000 years to about one-in-100 years and are projected to occur once every other year by the 2030s-2040s under continuing greenhouse gas emissions.”

As well as the record-breaking European summer of 2003, severe heatwaves in the last decade have baked Moscow in 2010, Texas in 2011 and Australia, in its ‘angry summer’ of 2012-2013.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/08/heatwaves-likely-every-other-year-by-2030s-says-met-office-study