bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

sponsorType

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Agence France-Presse

Man-made global warming and a natural surge in Earth’s surface temperature will join forces to make the next five years exceptionally hot, according to a study published Tuesday.
The double whammy of climate change and so-called natural variability more than doubles the likelihood of “extreme warm events” in ocean surface waters, creating a dangerous breeding ground for hurricanes and typhoons, they reported in Nature Communications.
“This warm phase is reinforcing long-term climate change,” said lead author Florian Sevellec, a climate scientist at the University of Brest in France.
“This particular phase is expected to continue for at least five years.”
Earth’s average surface temperature has always fluctuated.
Over the last million years, it vacillated roughly every 100,000 years between ice ages and balmy periods warmer than today.
Over the last 11,000 years, those variations have become extremely modest, allowing our species to flourish.
Man-made climate change – caused by billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases injected into the atmosphere, mainly over the last century – has come on top of those small shifts, and today threatens to overwhelm them.
Teasing apart the influence of carbon pollution and natural variation has long bedevilled scientists trying hey to quantify the impact of climate change on cyclones, droughts, floods and other forms of extreme weather.
Sevellec and his colleagues tackled the problem in a different way.
First, they focused on the natural fluctuations that – for most climate scientists – are “noise” obscuring the climate change fingerprint.
Second, they used a streamlined statistical approach rather than the comprehensive climate models that generate most long-term forecasts.
“We developed a system for predicting interannual” – or short-term – “natural variations in climate,” Sevellec said.
“For the period 2018-2022, we found an anomaly equivalent to the impact of anthropogenic warming.”
Natural warming, in other words, will have about the same impact as man-made climate change over the next five years.
The likelihood of a marine heatwave or other ocean “warming events” is predicted to increase by 150 per cent.
The new method – dubbed PROCAST, for PRObabilistic foreCAST – was tested against past temperature records and proved at least as accurate as standard models.
It can be run in seconds on a laptop, rather than requiring weeks of computing time on a super-computer.
“This opens of the possibility of doing climate forecasts to more researchers, especially in countries that don’t have easy access to super-computers,” Sevellec said.
The researchers intend to adapt their system to make regional predictions, and – in addition to temperature – to estimate rainfall and drought trends.
The Paris climate treaty calls for capping global warming at “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, and 1.5 degrees Celsius if deemed feasible.
On current trends, however, Earth is on track to heat up by twice that much before the end of the century.


Japan should put more eggs in the renewable basket

Without pension reform, China is leaving its rural elderly out in the cold

High Seas Treaty a chance for China to lead on marine conservation

1 dead in UK, 100,000 French homes without power as storms batter Europe

Climate change

Brace yourself for five years of exceptionally hot weather, as natural fluctuation doubles man-made warming: study

A man jumps into the lake near the town of Gjakova on August 12 as a heatwave sweeps across Europe. Photo: Agence France-Presse

A woman covered with mud sunbathes in Ovca, near Belgrade, on August 11, 2018 as a heatwave sweeps across Europe. (Photo by OLIVER BUNIC / AFP)

A fireman stands on a burning field on August 8, 2018 in Vechelde, northwestern Germany, as an ongoing heatwave hits the country. (Photo by Julian Stratenschulte / dpa / AFP) / Germany OUT

epa06932839 Beach goers in Scheveningen, The Netherlands. 07 August 2018. Media reports on 07 August 2018 state that Europe is currently in the middle of a heatwave with European temperature records possibly broken in the coming days. EPA-EFE/JERRY LAMPEN

News

World

Scientists are predicting ‘extreme warm events’ and an increased risk of hurricanes and typhoons through 2022


Scientists are predicting “extreme warm events” and an increased risk of hurricanes and typhoons through 2022.


Brace yourself for five years of exceptionally hot weather, as natural fluctuation doubles man-made warming: study

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Scientists are predicting ‘extreme warm events’ and an increased risk of hurricanes and typhoons through 2022

Scientists are predicting ‘extreme warm events’ and an increased risk of hurricanes and typhoons through 2022