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Climate change role clear in many extreme events but social factors also key, study finds
(The Guardian, 28 Jun 2022) Climate change role clear in many extreme events but social factors also key, study finds
Professor says link to extreme weather sometimes overestimated but climate costs underestimated.
Climate change is to blame for the majority of the heatwaves being recorded around the planet but the relation to other extreme events impacts on society is less clear, according to a study.
“I think on the one hand we overestimate climate change because it’s now quite common that every time an extreme event happens, there is a big assumption that climate change is playing a big role, which is not always the case,” said Friederike Otto, a climate change and environment professor at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, who was one of the lead authors of the research.
“But on the other hand, we really underestimate those events where climate change does play a role in what the costs are, especially the non-economic costs of extreme weather events to our societies.”
In the study published in the journal IOP Publishing, Otto’s team used “attribution science” to pore over available international data, literature and climate models – as well as the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports – and calculate how human-induced climate change is affecting the impact of five types of extreme weather events: heatwaves, heavy rainfall, drought, wildfires and tropical cyclones.
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The Guardian, 28 Jun 2022: Climate change role clear in many extreme events but social factors also key, study finds
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