Environmental News from India:
There is now increasing agreement among scientists that the March-April heatwave over the Indian subcontinent is also an amplification of climate change.
Whether the March-April extreme heatwave spell in India happened solely because of the climate crisis is now an obsolete question because most extreme heatwave events globally are, to a large extent, because of the climate crisis — and heatwaves of this scale almost certainly wouldn’t have happened in the pre-industrial world (1750 to 1850), top scientists argued in a recent essay.
In the face of the climate change-led extreme heatwaves, attribution science should focus on the upper limits of adaptation and prepare communities for unknown climatic extremes of the future; the scientists specializing in attribution science, a field of research which helps understand if an extreme weather event happened due to the climate crisis, wrote in Springer journal on Monday.
“Citizens in many countries are now experiencing record-smashing heatwaves that were intensified due to anthropogenic climate change. Whether today’s most impactful heatwaves could have occurred in a pre-industrial climate, traditionally a central focus of attribution research, is fast becoming an obsolete question. The next frontier for attribution science is to inform adaptation decision-making in the face of unprecedented future heat,” the essay in Springer journal by scientists from New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute, Victoria University of Wellington; Center for Health and the Global Environment, University of Washington; and Grantham Institute, Imperial College London said.
“Attribution studies have been crucial in demonstrating that extreme weather events in several regions, particularly heat waves, floods, and cyclones, are occurring due to climate change. Now, we are past the phase of asking if each of these extreme weather events is due to climate change and focus on mitigation and adaptation. The question has become obsolete and a frequent distraction from working towards climate change solutions. The frequency, intensity, duration, and area covered by these heatwaves are increasing and set to intensify further in the future, and there is sufficient data and research to establish that,” said Mathew Roxy Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology responding to the essay.
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Source: Hindustan Times