Impakter
  • FINANCE
    • ESG News
    • Sustainable Finance
    • Business
  • TECH
    • Start-up
    • AI & Machine Learning
    • Green Tech
  • Environment
    • Biodiversity
    • Climate Change
    • Circular Economy
    • Energy
  • Industry News
    • Entertainment
    • Fashion & Lifestyle
    • Food and Agriculture
    • Health
    • Politics & Foreign Affairs
    • Philanthropy
    • Science
    • Sport
  • Editorial Series
    • SDGs Series
    • Shape Your Future
    • Sustainable Cities
      • Copenhagen
      • San Francisco
      • Seattle
      • Sydney
  • About us
    • Company
    • Team
    • Global Leaders
    • Partners
    • Write for Impakter
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
No Result
View All Result
  • FINANCE
    • ESG News
    • Sustainable Finance
    • Business
  • TECH
    • Start-up
    • AI & Machine Learning
    • Green Tech
  • Environment
    • Biodiversity
    • Climate Change
    • Circular Economy
    • Energy
  • Industry News
    • Entertainment
    • Fashion & Lifestyle
    • Food and Agriculture
    • Health
    • Politics & Foreign Affairs
    • Philanthropy
    • Science
    • Sport
  • Editorial Series
    • SDGs Series
    • Shape Your Future
    • Sustainable Cities
      • Copenhagen
      • San Francisco
      • Seattle
      • Sydney
  • About us
    • Company
    • Team
    • Global Leaders
    • Partners
    • Write for Impakter
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
No Result
View All Result
Impakter
No Result
View All Result
Home Environment Climate Change

Evidence Keeps Piling Up: Humans Worsen 71% of Extreme Weather Events

More studies show that human-induced climate warming makes extreme events like heatwaves and droughts worse

byFrancesco Luise
August 7, 2022
in Climate Change, Environment
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Over the last two decades, a field of climate-science research known as “extreme event attribution” has flourished providing bewildering insights into the human fingerprint on extreme weather events such as floods, heatwaves, droughts and storms.

Tangible — often catastrophic — weather events can give substance to the otherwise seemingly abstract concept of anthropogenic climate change.

From wildfires in the US and heatwaves in India and Pakistan to typhoons in Asia and record-breaking rainfall in the UK, scientists have fed climate literature hundreds of studies on weather extremes worldwide.

Since 2017, Carbon Brief maps such studies to track this evolving topic. Unsurprisingly, the result is mounting evidence that human activity is raising the risk of some types of extreme weather, especially those linked to heat.

The main findings of their latest analysis are:

  • 71% of the extreme weather events and trends were made more likely or more severe by human-caused climate change; 
  • 9% of those were made less likely or less severe by climate change, meaning 80% of all events experienced some human impact;
  • 93% of extreme heat events or trends were made more likely or more severe by climate change; 
  • 56% of extreme rainfall or flooding events were made more likely or more severe by human activity; 
  • 68% of drought events were made more likely or more severe by human activity.

The mapping includes 504 extreme weather events and trends across the globe for which scientists have carried out attribution studies. It considers individual extreme events, such as a wildfire or storm, longer-term trends in extreme weather, such as the change in frequency of flooding or marine heatwaves over time, and compound extreme events, such as the higher likelihood of combined dry and hot events.

Source: Carbon Brief

The literature of the past 20 years is heavily dominated by studies on extreme heat (30%), rainfall or flooding (25%) and drought (16%), together accounting for more than two-thirds of all published studies. 

While heatwaves are the most-studied extreme event in attribution literature, they are becoming less and less interesting for researchers as evidence is already strong enough.

Source: Carbon Brief

Attribution science is increasingly considering the impacts of extremes, rather than focusing purely on the weather event, meaning it could be translated into “legal causality” — writes Carbon Brief — and used in courts as it bridges the gap between a general understanding that human-induced climate change induces negative impacts and concrete evidence of the role of climate change at a specific location for a specific extreme event.


Related articles: Climate Reporting: Why People Won’t Listen | Big Oil Sees Record Profits

In fact, attribution research has also identified signals of human influence in other indicators of a changing climate, such as increasing average temperature, rising lake temperatures or sea level rise. 

Recent research has even been able to detect the fingerprint of climate change “from any single day in the observed global record since early 2012, and since 1999 on the basis of a year of data”. 

And this is getting worse. In 2017, 68% of events were found to have a human impact (with 63% made more severe or likely by climate change and 6% less so). We’re now up to 80% (with 71% of the extreme weather events made more likely or severe and 9% less so).

Recent studies have concluded that several heat extremes would have been impossible without human influence on the climate. These include Siberia’s heatwave of 2020, the Pacific north-west “heat dome” event of 2021 and Europe’s record-breaking summer of 2021 (and let’s be prepared for the outlook of summer 2022, which promises to be just as bad — if not worse).

However, finding that climate change contributed to an event is not the same as saying it caused that event. Attribution science is about understanding if the likelihood or magnitude of a particular event is different from what it would be in a world that was not warming.

And scientists are constantly looking for improved ways to broader the scope of their work. 

One of the major challenges is to expand research to cover a larger and more diverse geographical area due to limitations in the quality and availability of data and appropriate models. The attribution map highlights, for example, that there are relatively few studies of extreme weather in Africa and South America.

Scientists are also becoming faster at uncovering climate attributions, sometimes just days after an event has occurred, and might at some point be able to carry out real-time analyses.

Moving forward, international collaboration will be key for developing new techniques and processes, especially when it comes to advanced forecasting, which could provide means to timely reach out to people in risky areas.

Attribution research can also look back in time, inspecting how past events would behave with present-day levels of greenhouse gases. However, this isn’t something for the faint-hearted: in 2020, some scientists found that the return period of a once 1-in-100-year heatwave summer would be reduced to about 1-in-40 years in today’s climate. 


Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of Impakter.com — In the Featured Photo: Extreme heat danger sign in death valley. Featured Photo Credit: m01229.

Tags: Anthropogenic Climate ChangeClimate scienceExtreme HeatExtreme WeatherGlobal warming
Previous Post

Hip Hip Hooray for Hand-Me-Down Clothing

Next Post

Eco-Vacation: Top Kid-Friendly Ideas

Francesco Luise

Francesco Luise

Francesco is News Editor at Impakter. As an Economics graduate with a specialization in Energy Management, he has moved towards the international energy sector maintaining a focus on sustainability and inclusion, and is currently cooperating with the Global Solar Council. He has conducted research in the areas of socio-economic development, inequalities and energy poverty. He has been a field researcher concerning the microeconomic profiling of rural communities in Africa and Latin America.

Related Posts

fashion Sustainability
Business

Fashion Giants and Sustainability: 5 Brands Reshaping the Industry

June 13, 2025
g7
Climate Change

The G7 at a Crossroads

June 12, 2025
How advanced filtration could save our drinking water from forever chemicals
Education

How advanced filtration could save our drinking water from forever chemicals

June 10, 2025
Next Post
Eco-Vacation: Top Kid-Friendly Ideas

Eco-Vacation: Top Kid-Friendly Ideas

Recent News

fashion Sustainability

Fashion Giants and Sustainability: 5 Brands Reshaping the Industry

June 13, 2025
ESG news regarding rise in oil prices and fall of stock market after Israel strikes Iran, 241 billion euros to be spent on nuclear projects in the EU, first fishery solar project in Taiwan, fashion industry greenwashing

Gold and Oil Up, Stocks Down After Israel Strikes Iran

June 13, 2025
BlackRock on Trial: The Antitrust Showdown That Could Redefine ESG Investing

BlackRock on Trial: The Antitrust Showdown That Could Redefine ESG Investing

June 13, 2025

Impakter informs you through the ESG news site and empowers your business CSRD compliance and ESG compliance with its Klimado SaaS ESG assessment tool marketplace that can be found on: www.klimado.com

Registered Office Address

Klimado GmbH
Niddastrasse 63,

60329, Frankfurt am Main, Germany


IMPAKTER is a Klimado GmbH website

Impakter is a publication that is identified by the following International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is the following 2515-9569 (Printed) and 2515-9577 (online – Website).


Office Hours - Monday to Friday

9.30am - 5.00pm CEST


Email

stories [at] impakter.com

By Audience

  • TECH
    • Start-up
    • AI & MACHINE LEARNING
    • Green Tech
  • ENVIRONMENT
    • Biodiversity
    • Energy
    • Circular Economy
    • Climate Change
  • INDUSTRY NEWS
    • Entertainment
    • Fashion & Lifestyle
    • Food and Agriculture
    • Health
    • Politics & Foreign Affairs
    • Philanthropy
    • Science
    • Sport
    • Editorial Series

ESG/Finance Daily

  • ESG News
  • Sustainable Finance
  • Business

Klimado Platform

  • Klimado ESG Tool
  • Impakter News

About Us

  • Team
  • Global Leaders
  • Partners
  • Write for Impakter
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy

© 2025 IMPAKTER. All rights reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • FINANCE
    • ESG News
    • Sustainable Finance
    • Business
  • TECH
    • Start-up
    • AI & Machine Learning
    • Green Tech
  • Environment
    • Biodiversity
    • Climate Change
    • Circular Economy
    • Energy
  • Industry News
    • Entertainment
    • Fashion & Lifestyle
    • Food and Agriculture
    • Health
    • Politics & Foreign Affairs
    • Philanthropy
    • Science
    • Sport
  • Editorial Series
    • SDGs Series
    • Shape Your Future
    • Sustainable Cities
      • Copenhagen
      • San Francisco
      • Seattle
      • Sydney
  • About us
    • Company
    • Team
    • Global Leaders
    • Partners
    • Write for Impakter
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy

© 2024 IMPAKTER. All rights reserved.