Angry Weather: Heat Waves, Floods, Storms, and the New Science of Climate Change (World Weather Attribution)

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We need to be able to move beyond the general global trends that have tended to dominate the conversation on climate change. Through her account of the hurricane unfolding, Otto reveals how attribution science works in real time, and determines that Harvey’s terrifying floods were three times more likely to occur due to human-induced climate change. But we can see the difference in Great Britain, for example, too; we simply have to compare the seasons—summer rain is often much heavier (though shorter and less frequent) than winter rain. Ich lese ja gerne mal eine Außenseiterposition, aber Otto scheint sich gar nicht bewusst zu sein, wie sehr sie beschwichtigt. It is a book that will leave you both more knowledgeable and more motivated to engage with the challenges of our changing climate.

There are times when the fingerprints of climate change cannot be detected, and that’s important too. Using peer-reviewed mathematical modelling, within three weeks the team estimates that climate change makes an event like Harvey three times more likely at the current state of change. James Watt, a Scottish mechanical engineer and inventor, concocted a new way of reducing steam and fuel consumption in fire-powered engines. This explains why the risk of drought can increase in some parts of the world even though the world as a whole is growing wetter. One of the pioneers of this method is Friederike Otto, and she describes how it works in her book Angry Weather: Heat waves, floods, storms, and the new science of climate change.

Unlike water vapor, which leaves the atmosphere a few days after entering it in the form of rain, carbon dioxide sticks around for hundreds of years. The quantity and intensity of rain is only increasing as a global average; some places will get more rain, others less. To do this, they must be able to model what the world would be like if there was no climate change and then calculate if the weather event was created by climate change. Dostałam w prezencie, chciałam dowiedzieć się więcej o zmianach klimatu i poukładać sobie fakty w głowie - ta książka jest do tego świetna. My tips here are quite simple and honestly based on my lack of multitasking skills, so they are not for everyone!

Archived internal notes show that they did not doubt the scientific evidence but decided to publicly deny it to keep their businesses going. A pioneering scientist solves a pressing climate question: Can we pin the blame for individual extreme weather events on humans? Commentators will cite these as yet more examples of climate change, while those denying climate change will argue that these are rare but naturally occurring events.Secondly, and more importantly, disentangling predictable drivers of an extreme event like climate change from natural variability and changes in vulnerability and exposure will allow a better understanding of where risks are coming from, and in turn how they can be addressed. It’s like a sponge; the larger it is, the more water it can soak up—and when you squeeze it, it releases all this water. However, the Earth’s growing hotter does not mean that we will all experience nothing but tropical downpours no matter where we are. Since 1776, the year in which King George III granted James Watt patent number 913 for his steam engine, the Earth’s temperature has increased by around 1 °C (1.

In other words, the dynamics of when and where it rains change so much that certain regions suddenly receive hardly any rain at all. When I started in metal construction, the first things I made were weather-related pieces of jewellery and this is when I developed my first collection. I made these pieces thinking on my years living in northern Mexico, where deserts and mountains are part of a landscape that makes me so happy every time I see or think of it. Sir Richard Doll and collaborators did pioneering work to demonstrate the link between smoking and lung cancer in 1950, using novel statistical methods to overcome the charge that ‘correlation does not mean causation’.It might sound trivial, but—as we know from every good thriller—it’s not that easy to reconstruct an event. Since then, billions and billions of tons have been extracted and pumped from the ground to be burned in power plants and vehicles, all the while heating up the Earth like a greenhouse.

But when more low-pressure areas move into the region, bringing rain with them, the two can combine to produce an awful lot of rain. Some regions experience more rain simply because the temperature of the air has increased and it can absorb more water.There’s more to it than I’ve mentioned in my summary, and I can’t explain it well, but I did find it interesting. Through rapid attribution studies, which provide timely scientific evidence showing the extent to which climate change influenced a given event, WWA has helped to change the global conversation around climate change, influencing adaptation strategies and paving the way for new sustainability litigation. Attribution science - climate forensics, or reverse engineering - is a new discipline explained in this book with passion and verve by one of its creators. Greenhouse gases don’t just make the atmosphere warmer; altering its composition by adding more carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor (as we have done) also changes the atmospheric circulation. Climate change is something that affects us all in one way or another and Friederike Otto has done a great job of explaining the science behind it without being boring.