The majority of heatwaves and almost a fifth of extreme rain
storms can be blamed on human activity, a new study has warned.
Researchers say that three quarters of extreme hot weather
and 18 per cent of heavy precipitation is being driven by global warming that
has occurred due to man-made emissions.
They warn that as climate change pushes global temperatures
higher over the coming decades, humans will become responsible for 40 per cent
of extreme rainfall events.
Dr Erich Fischer,
from the institute for atmospheric and climate science at the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology in Zurich who led the study, said: 'Climate change
includes not only changes in mean climate but also in weather extremes.
'With every degree of
warming it is the rarest and the most extreme events and thereby the ones with
typically the highest socio-economic impacts for which the largest fraction is
due to human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.
'We show that at the
present-day warming of 0.85°C about 18 per cent of the moderate daily
precipitation extremes over land are attributable to the observed temperature
increase since pre-industrial times, which in turn primarily results from human
influence.
'For 2°C of warming
the fraction of precipitation extremes attributable to human influence rises to
about 40 per cent.
'Likewise, today
about 75 per cent of the moderate daily hot extremes over land are attributable
to warming.'
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