Every time an extreme weather event occurs, be it a heat wave, hurricane or tornado, in recent years we have wondered a lot if it is related to global warming or not that is happening on planet Earth.
Eager to provide a definitive scientific answer, a team led by Noah Diffenbaugh, a researcher at Stanford University's School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences, combined statistical analyzes of climate observations with computer-developed models to study the influence of global warming on individual extreme weather events.
Although scientists in the past avoided linking individual climate events to global warming, since it was difficult for them to separate the influence that humanity has from natural climate variability, today thanks to scientific advance Diffenbaugh and his team have been able to give answer to a question so many times asked: Are extreme weather events caused by global warming?
According to the study that has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the answer is clear: yes, and with increasing frequency, as the global average temperature increases, extreme events occur that put people's lives at risk.
In fact, the odds of hotter events have increased over 80% of the globe's surface for which observations were available. On the other hand, for drier and wetter events, the authors found that human influence has increased the odds by about half the area for which reliable observations are available.
This new research will allow us to have a more precise idea of how humans are affecting the natural balance of the world's ecosystems.
You can read the study here.