Heidi Cullen Climate Central February 11, 2014

Seeing Climate, Seeing Change

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Outline

Climate Change Observations of Changing Extremes Extreme Weather Attribution

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How do we process risk?

Source: Erin Sherman, Princeton

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Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.

- Mark Twain

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Seeing Climate: The Holocene

Warm period spanning last 12,000 yrs. Emergence of agriculture and civilizations. Does complexity demand climate stability?

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Seeing Change: A Warming Trend

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Seeing Climate Change

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Seeing Climate Change

David Keeling Mauna Loa Observatory

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Outline
Climate Change Observations of Changing Extremes Extreme Weather Attribution

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Climate is what you affect, weather is what gets you.

- Myles Allen, Oxford University

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Its a threat.

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Observations: Global Temperature

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Observations: Global Precipitation

IPCC AR5 Report, 2013

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Observations: U.S. Precipitation

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Observations: Heavy Precipitation

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Record High vs. Low Temperature

If temps were not warming, # of record daily highs & lows would be even. 2000s: 312,746 daily record highs vs. 156,494 daily record lows. 2010s so far: 91,383 daily record highs vs. 38,881 record lows. Business as Usual: 20-to-1 by 2050 and 50-to-1 by 2100.

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Changing Risk: Hurricane Sandy-like Floods

New York City, with each passing year, faces an escalating risk of Sandymagnitude ooding events.! Sea level rise has already nearly doubled the annual probability of a Sandylevel ood in the New York City region since 1950. Sandy-like ooding could occur once every few decades in Manhattan, and on the order of once a year in parts of New Jersey and coastal Connecticut with about 4 feet of sea level rise. Global!sea!level!rise!caused Sandy to ood roughly!25!square miles more than!it would have, putting the homes of an additional ~38,000 people in New Jersey and ~45,000 in New York City below the storm tide - and in harm's way!(~83,000 homes).
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Hurricane Sandy, October 2012

Outline

Climate Change Observations of Changing Extremes Extreme Weather Attribution

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Extreme Weather Attribution

IPCC (Field et al. 2012) concluded that it is likely that anthropogenic inuences have led to warming of extreme daily minimum and maximum temperatures at the global scale and contributed to intensication of extreme precipitation at the global scale. It was often stated that it simply was not possible to make an attribution statement about an individual weather or climate event. However, scientic thinking on this issue has moved on and now it is widely accepted that attribution statements about individual weather or climate events are possible, provided proper account is taken of the probabilistic nature of attribution. (BAMS Special Report, 2012)
Russian Heat Wave, 2010.
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Extreme Weather Attribution

PI for RX1day increased ~4% [1.4-6.8%] over 1951-2005 due to human forcing. Waiting time for early 1950s 20-yr event reduced to ~15-yr. Fraction of Attributable risk = 25%.

Source: Zhang et al., GRL, 2013.

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The world with us...and without us.

By consulting climate records and modeling extreme events with and without added greenhouse gases, we can talk about how much global warming has increased the chances of extreme events.

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Connecting Climate to Weather

Europe 2003
Summer of 2003: likely warmest in Europe since AD 1500. Paris Temp: 104F 70,000+ deaths
Stott et al., Nature, 2004

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Ralph Keeling

Attribution Study
2003 European Heat Wave
Human inuence at least doubled the chance of summers as hot as the one Europe saw in 2003 Models predict that by 2040, the 2003-type summers will be happening every other year
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Ralph Keeling

Extreme Weather Attribution

2011 Texas heat/drought: 20x more likely to occur than 50 yrs ago given same conditions in the tropical Pacic Ocean. 2011 Thailand ooding: climate change did not increase the likelihood of heavy rainfall.

Source: Kerr, Nature, 2013.

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Moscow Heat Wave

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Extreme Weather Attribution

July temperatures in 2010 were 6oC above normal, of which <2oC can be blamed on warming since 1960. So in terms of magnitude, the event was indeed mostly natural. But the (very likely mostly anthropogenic) warming that occurred since 1960 increased the probability of an event of this magnitude from one-percent-peryear to three-percent-per-year. So in terms of probability, it could be argued the event was mostly anthropogenic.

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Conclusions
Climate change has made some extreme weather events more likely, some less likely. We do not see evidence for a strong human inuence in all weather extremes. Natural climate variability a factor in all events. There can be apparently conicting results for the same event. Attribution results rely heavily on models whose limitations may not be fully understood. Limitations include biases and poor sampling in observational datasets.
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Source: The New Yorker, December 10, 2012 .

Thank You. hcullen@climatecentral.org @HeidiCullen on twitter

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