Massive floods triggered by heavy downpours have devastated northeastern Bangladesh and India over the past week, killing dozens of people and displacing thousands.
Meanwhile, in the Horn of Africa, the worst drought conditions in more than four decades have persisted, raising the likelihood of severe famine for millions of people in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia.
And in the United States, a relentless heat dome recently baked the Northern and Central Plains, breaking record daily highs before moving eastward.
Almost at the halfway point, 2022 has already witnessed a torrent of extreme weather events around the world. Unprecedented heat waves that have cooked Europe and the U.S. and rainfall that has spawned historic flooding from Yellowstone to South Asia are dominating the headlines. And with the hottest months of summer and the peak of a projected above-average Atlantic hurricane season approaching, the worst is probably yet to come.
Though it is difficult to pinpoint whether climate change is giving a boost to extreme weather events, some scientists agree that the link is a strong possibility.
“The way to think about these events is that there’s a climate change component and then there’s a component that it is just the atmosphere and the ocean doing their own thing naturally, without the influence of humans,” said Amy Clement, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, who studies the causes of climate change on all timescales, from the glacial period to the future.
While paleoclimate data show that there have been extreme droughts and floods over millennia, “the influence of humans on climate today is clear,” Clement explained. “There’s no getting around it: a warmer atmosphere holds more water. And when it rains in a warmer atmosphere, it will rain more.”
Ben Kirtman, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the Rosenstiel School, also leads the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies, where he works with researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to build more accurate global forecasts. In particular, Kirtman leads efforts to build improved weather prediction models that forecast a few weeks out to a year ahead of time, including anticipated climate and predicted sea level rise. Therefore, Kirtman has a unique pulse on how our weather is changing.
“You get much more contrasts and extremes increasing as a result of climate change,” Kirtman said.
Brian Soden, a professor of atmospheric sciences who specializes in the use of satellite observations to test and improve computer simulations of Earth’s climate, agreed.
“Heavy rain events, extreme temperatures, and drought—all of those things are consistent with what you’d find in a warming climate,” Soden said.
Kirtman said that people should expect more extreme weather events during the summer, including tropical cyclones. And not just in North America. He noted the extreme heat in Hungary a few summers back, along with Mediterranean drought, which was associated with the floods in Germany last summer.
“We should expect a lot more extremes going forward, and that’s what we are going to have to adapt to,” he added.
Earth’s atmosphere is only getting warmer as concentrations of greenhouse gases continue to rise. In May, carbon dioxide measured at the NOAA Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory peaked for 2022 at 421 parts per million, the highest levels in human history, according to scientists from NOAA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
“There’s every reason to think that what we’re seeing right now with extreme rainfall and the resulting floods has a climate change signal to it that’s linked to an increasingly warm atmosphere,” Clement pointed out.
The same connection, she added, can be applied to worsening drought conditions, as warmer temperatures increase evaporation, reducing surface water and drying out soil and vegetation.
“The wet will only get wetter, and the dry, drier,” Clement said.
Also, according to Kirtman, because of a developing La Niña weather pattern that is starting to affect North America already, the U.S. can expect more heat waves throughout the summer, along with more drought this winter, and an active wildfire season late this summer and into the fall.
Drought is also taking a devastating toll on the Horn of Africa, where four consecutive failed rainy seasons have left millions of people facing severe famine, the United Nations World Food Programme has warned.
“The places that are most susceptible to climate change are countries that really rely on local agriculture, so they are the ones that are more likely to suffer the socioeconomic effects of climate change,” Kirtman said.
The climate emergency is here, Clement warned. “We’re already experiencing the impacts, whether it’s tidal flooding in Miami, extreme drought in Africa, or wildfires in California. And what we can expect to see in the future is that these trends of extreme weather will worsen as the atmosphere keeps warming and if nothing is done to ramp down greenhouse gas emissions,” she said.
Kirtman suggested that one thing people can do in the immediate future is to conserve water, since it is likely that the entire southern tier of the United States will be drier this winter.
But will the catastrophic weather of 2022 spur greater action on climate change?
“What’s leading to inaction on climate change now is not an information deficit,” Clement said. “For decades, we’ve had enough information to act. What’s happening now is that there’s a motivational deficit.”
Kirtman is hopeful that the U.S. will become a leader in cutting carbon emissions, but he recognizes the challenge.
“That’s the problem with climate change and mitigation—when countries do things that are harmful locally, the response is global, so the U.S. can’t change climate by itself,” he said.
What is clear is that the effects of climate change are indisputable and widespread, not only for the environment but also for world economies, said Renato Molina, an assistant professor of environmental science and policy at the Rosenstiel School, who has a courtesy appointment at the Miami Herbert Business School.
“Changes in weather patterns can make agriculture significantly less productive, which impoverishes farmers and their families,” Molina said. “Some fisheries might become more productive, but others might plainly collapse. Ecosystems and populations that rely on coral ecosystems might see those resources go away as corals bleach, for instance,” he added.
“It is hard to pin down all the specific impacts, as they are distributed throughout the whole economy,” Molina continued. “But what we know is that climate change is extremely costly for society as a whole.”
