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Extreme heatwaves that previously only struck once every 50 years are now expected to happen once per decade because of global warming, while downpours and droughts have also become more frequent, a UN climate science report says.
The report found that we are already experiencing those effects of climate change, as the planet has surpassed more than 1 degree Celsius in average warming. Heatwaves, droughts and torrential rains are only set to become more frequent and extreme as the earth warms further.
It is the first time that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has quantified the likelihood of these extreme events in a wide variety of scenarios.
The report found that once-in-a-decade heavy rain events are now 1.3 times more likely and 6.7% wetter, compared with the 50 years up to 1900 when major human-driven warming started to occur.
Previously once-in-a-decade droughts could happen every five or six years.
Scientists emphasized that these effects of climate change are already here, with events like the heatwave in the US Pacific Northwest killing hundreds in June and Brazil currently experiencing its worst drought in 91 years.
“The heatwave in Canada, fires in California, floods in Germany, floods in China, droughts in central Brazil make it very, very clear that climate extremes are having a very heavy toll,” said Paulo Artaxo, a lead author of the report and an environmental physicist at the University of Sao Paulo.
The future looks even grimmer, with more warming meaning more frequent extreme events.
Heatwaves show stronger increases in frequency with warming than all other extreme events. Twice in a century heatwaves could happen roughly every six years with 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, a level which the report says could be surpassed within two decades.
Should the world become 4 degrees Celsius hotter, as could happen in a high-emissions scenario, those heatwaves would happen every one to two years.
