Extreme Heat Defines Climate Change

The connection between heat waves and global warming strengthen

By Brian Kahn and Climate Central | November 5, 2015
pranav/Flickr, CC BY 2.0
The lasting legacy of climate change will be heat. The land, the oceans, all of it. Its the tie that binds and while
the global average temperature is the defining metric, the increasing incidence of heat waves and longer
lasting extreme heat is how the world will experience it.
All eight papers dealing with extreme heat events in this years Bulletin of the American Meteorological
Societys attribution report show a clear climate change signal that made them more likely, more hot or both. In
fact, of the 22 studies scientists have submitted to the annual review over the past four years, only one didnt
find that climate change increased the odds or severity of extreme heat.
"Global warming is the most obvious, well-documented effect of climate change, Stephanie Herring, a climate
scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and organizer of this years attribution issue,
said. As a result, the signal is very strong so we can more easily detect it amongst noise of natural variability
compared to other types of extreme events."
In the case of a strong signal, 2014 stands out as particularly notable. It was the hottest year on record, though
this year is on track to top last years record (and signs are already pointing to 2016 continuing the record
heat parade).
The lift in background temperatures makes extreme heat more likely. The underlying processes that
relate climate change to heat wave intensity and frequency are fairly straightforward to understand: if you
increase the average temperature by even a modest amount, then it turns out that you dramatically increase
the area under the extreme positive tail of the distribution, Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State
who wasnt involved in any of the new studies, said in an email.
Put another way, its like having Steph Curry on your basketball team. He doesnt always guarantee a win, but
he sure as heck increases the odds of a victory.
Unfortunately, rising temperatures are not a game and can have dangerous consequences. Heat at last years
Australian Open had players hallucinating on the court and this years heat wave in India killed thousands.

Researchers looked at heat waves and longer-lasting extreme heat events in Korea,
Australia, Argentina, Europe and warm ocean temperatures in parts of the Pacific and
Atlantic. In all cases, they found that climate change played a role in increasing the
likelihood of extreme heat.
The May 2014 heat wave in Australia included some of the most dramatic results, with
climate change increasing the likelihood an eye-popping, sweat-inducing 23 times.
For that study, researchers zoomed down to the city-level in Adelaide and
Melbourne. Mitchell Black, the studys lead author and Ph.D. student at the University of
Melbourne, said it is likely the first time such a localized analysis has been done.
Climate change is also making extreme heat even hotter. Its not just a game of odds
when it comes to extreme heat, its also one of intensity. An analysis of Europes incredibly
warm year in 2014 shows that human greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for
roughly half of the extra warmth added to the system.

Climate Change Signal Emerges from the Weather

Scientists begin to detect the influence of global warming on extreme weather
By Andrea Thompson and Climate Central | November 5, 2015

From Hawaiis flurry of hurricanes, to record high sea ice in Antarctica, and a heat wave that
cooked the Australian Open like shrimp on a barbie, 2014 saw some wild weather. How much of
that was tied to climate change is what scientists around the world tried to answer in the Bulletin
of the American Meteorological Societys annual attribution report, which was published Thursday.
What they discovered was that the clearest impacts of warming could be found in heat-related
events, from heat waves on land to unusually hot ocean waters. Other events, like droughts in
East Africa and the Middle East, Californias intense wildfires, and winter storms that continually
swept across the eastern U.S., were harder to pinpoint. In part this is because such events are
inherently complex, with a multitude of factors influencing them.
For example, while the East African drought was found to be both more likely and more intense
because of warming, the situation in the Middle East was less clear, with no discernable climate
change connection to the various factors that influenced it. Likewise, no direct push from climate
change could be found in Californias wildfire activity, though it is clear that it is increasing the
overall wildfire risk there.
And while some events, like the U.S. winter storms and the record high Antarctic sea ice extent,
could be pinned to a particular cause, that cause could not be linked to climate change. For other
events, like the drought in Brazil and flooding in the Canadian prairies, humans influenced the
likelihood in other ways besides the greenhouse gases that continue to be emitted into the
atmosphere.
What was clear, though, is that the fast-growing field of what is called extreme event attribution
is gaining momentum. Researchers are casting a wider net for extreme events to examine and
continually refining their methods. Attribution work has traveled a considerable distance since its
inception just over a decade ago.
One thing we can say for sure: We don't say one can't attribute any single event to climate
change any more, Adam Sobel, an atmospheric scientist who wasnt involved with the BAMS
report, said in an email.
The BAMS special report was its largest yet, with 32 studies looking at 28 different weather
events from all seven continents. The report also included some types of events that didnt
appear in the first three, including wildfires, tropical cyclones and high ocean temperatures.
Its a real achievement of the scientific community, said Noah Diffenbaugh, a Stanford
University climate researcher who has conducted attribution research but wasnt involved in this
years BAMS issue.
The report has garnered increasingly broad interest and visibility over the past few years. I'm
sure that this interest will only continue to grow, Jim Kossin, a co-editor of the issue, said in an
email.

As has been the case since the first attribution studies, the firmest conclusions about the role of
warming came from high temperature events.
Of the eight heat events examinedincluding ones in Argentina, Australia, South Korea, China
and Europeseven were clearly made more likely because of human-caused warming. (In the
eighth, the influence was uncertain.) A May 2014 heat wave in Australia was made 23 times
more likely because of warming, according to one of the BAMS studies. In several of the events,
warming also made the heat waves more intense.
For the more complex weather events examined, the results overall were less clear. While
climate change was found to make drought in East Africa both more likely and stronger, it wasnt
found to be a major influence on the drought that has causedsevere water shortages in Brazil.
(That study was part of a Climate Central attribution effort.)
The same mix of results held true for studies looking into storms. One study found that warming
didnt seem to play a role in the increased winter storm activity over the U.S., but, in another
study by the same researchers, they did find that it did up the odds of the unusually
high hurricane activity around Hawaii.