Analysis: Evidence for climate extremes, costs, gets more local
OSLO (Reuters) - Scientists are finding evidence that man-made
climate change has raised the risks of individual weather
events, such as floods or heatwaves, marking a big step towards
pinpointing local costs and ways to adapt to freak conditions.
"We're seeing a great deal of progress in attributing a human
fingerprint to the probability of particular events or series of
events," said Christopher Field, co-chairman of a U.N. report
due in 2014 about the impacts of climate change. Experts have
long blamed a build-up of greenhouse gas emissions for raising
worldwide temperatures and causing desertification, floods,
droughts, heatwaves, more powerful storms and rising sea levels.
But until recently they have said that naturally very hot, wet,
cold, dry or windy weather might explain any single extreme
event, like the current drought in the United States or a rare
melt of ice in Greenland in July. But for some extremes, that is
now changing. A study