Blistering heat waves will become increasingly common sooner than feared, suggests new research. Some of the most serious consequences of climate change, including fatalities, result from extreme events, yet they have received relatively little attention.
A team led by Andreas Sterl of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute used a large ensemble of climate simulations to investigate how extreme values of climate variables are likely to change in a world with rapid economic growth that balances the use of fossil fuels against alternative energy sources. The researchers predict that extremely high temperatures will not only be more severe and more frequent as the planet warms, they will outpace increases in average temperatures. After correcting for a bias in the model that produces overestimates of extreme temperatures, the researchers still found that by the end of the century, the highest temperatures will far exceed 40 °C in southern Europe and the midwestern United States, and will reach beyond 50 °C in Australia, India, the Middle East and parts of Africa and South America.
The scientists, whose research was motivated partly by the deadly heat wave that struck Europe in 2003, warn that such dangerously high temperatures in densely populated areas should be taken very seriously.
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Heffernan, O. Extreme outlook. Nature Clim Change 1, 109 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/climate.2008.82
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/climate.2008.82
