Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Stanford scientists test links between extreme weather and climate change
http://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2017/04/24/stanford-scientir-climate-change/[font face=Serif]April 24, 2017
[font size=5]Stanford scientists test links between extreme weather and climate change[/font]
[font size=4]A new four-step “framework” aims to test the contribution of climate change to record-setting extreme weather events.[/font]
By Ker Than
[font size=3]…
In a new study, published in this week’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Diffenbaugh and a group of current and former Stanford colleagues outline a four-step “framework” for testing whether global warming has contributed to record-setting weather events. The new paper is the latest in a burgeoning field of climate science called “extreme event attribution,” which combines statistical analyses of climate observations with increasingly powerful computer models to study the influence of climate change on individual extreme weather events.
…
In order to avoid inappropriately attributing an event to climate change, the authors began with the assumption that global warming had played no role, and then used statistical analyses to test whether that assumption was valid. “Our approach is very conservative,” Diffenbaugh said. “It’s like the presumption of innocence in our legal system: The default is that the weather event was just bad luck, and a really high burden of proof is required to assign blame to global warming.”
The authors applied their framework to the hottest, wettest and driest events that have occurred in different areas of the world. They found that global warming from human emissions of greenhouse gases has increased the odds of the hottest events across more than 80 percent of the surface area of the globe for which observations were available. “Our results suggest that the world isn’t quite at the point where every record hot event has a detectable human fingerprint, but we are getting close,” Diffenbaugh said.
For the driest and wettest events, the authors found that human influence on the atmosphere has increased the odds across approximately half of the area that has reliable observations. “Precipitation is inherently noisier than temperature, so we expect the signal to be less clear,” Diffenbaugh said. “One of the clearest signals that we do see is an increase in the odds of extreme dry events in the tropics. This is also where we see the biggest increase in the odds of protracted hot events – a combination that poses real risks for vulnerable communities and ecosystems.”
…[/font][/font]
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1618082114[font size=5]Stanford scientists test links between extreme weather and climate change[/font]
[font size=4]A new four-step “framework” aims to test the contribution of climate change to record-setting extreme weather events.[/font]
By Ker Than
[font size=3]…
In a new study, published in this week’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Diffenbaugh and a group of current and former Stanford colleagues outline a four-step “framework” for testing whether global warming has contributed to record-setting weather events. The new paper is the latest in a burgeoning field of climate science called “extreme event attribution,” which combines statistical analyses of climate observations with increasingly powerful computer models to study the influence of climate change on individual extreme weather events.
…
In order to avoid inappropriately attributing an event to climate change, the authors began with the assumption that global warming had played no role, and then used statistical analyses to test whether that assumption was valid. “Our approach is very conservative,” Diffenbaugh said. “It’s like the presumption of innocence in our legal system: The default is that the weather event was just bad luck, and a really high burden of proof is required to assign blame to global warming.”
The authors applied their framework to the hottest, wettest and driest events that have occurred in different areas of the world. They found that global warming from human emissions of greenhouse gases has increased the odds of the hottest events across more than 80 percent of the surface area of the globe for which observations were available. “Our results suggest that the world isn’t quite at the point where every record hot event has a detectable human fingerprint, but we are getting close,” Diffenbaugh said.
For the driest and wettest events, the authors found that human influence on the atmosphere has increased the odds across approximately half of the area that has reliable observations. “Precipitation is inherently noisier than temperature, so we expect the signal to be less clear,” Diffenbaugh said. “One of the clearest signals that we do see is an increase in the odds of extreme dry events in the tropics. This is also where we see the biggest increase in the odds of protracted hot events – a combination that poses real risks for vulnerable communities and ecosystems.”
…[/font][/font]
