Hereon scientist develops new scientific method to analyse the influence of climate change on single extreme weather events.
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Extreme weather events are occurring more and more severely. This is often attributed to climate change. However, how does this connection between extreme weather and climate change actually look like? Linda van Garderen from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon now succeeded in further developing a research method, which – for the first time – attributes climate change to a specific extreme weather event. She showed that climate change intensified an already heavy drought in South America and led to a temperature increase of up to 4 degrees during one of the strongest heatwaves in Europe.
Scientists have often linked climate change to extreme events. These results however were mainly based on statistical methods. They allow statements about the probability of extreme events occurring or how likely it is that they will be more severe in the future. Analyses of individual events regarding climate change were not possible, though. Now Linda van Garderen, scientist at the Hereon Institute of Coastal Systems – Analysis and Modeling, was able to fill the gap with the combined method spectrally nudged storylines. On this basis, she showed that due to climate change the drought in South East South America (SESA) in 2011/ 2012 was more severe, while precipitation increased during the rest of the year. For one of the heaviest heatwaves in Europe so far, she was also able to prove that climate change led to a temperature increase of up to 4°C in certain areas.
“To find a clear climate signal of locally up to 4°C in one of the strongest heat events in recorded European history, shows us how much human action has already altered our planet,” says Linda van Garderen, lead author of the studies. (Source: Hereon Press Release)
Read the complete Hereon Press Release:
==> Extreme weather and climate change
Correspondig publications:
van Garderen, L., & Mindlin, J. (2022): A storyline attribution of the 2011/2012 drought in Southeastern South America. Weather, doi:10.1002/wea.4185
van Garderen, L., Feser, F., & Shepherd, T.G. (2021): A methodology for attributing the role of climate change in extreme events: a global spectrally nudged storyline. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 171–186, doi:10.5194/nhess-21-171-2021