Extreme weather events possible even under moderate global warming: Study

Extreme climate hazards such as severe drought and intense rainfall that are usually linked with 3 degrees Celsius or 4 degrees Celsius global warming could occur even under a moderate warming of 2 degrees Celsius threatening food production forests and thickly populated urban areas a study has foundWhile the Paris Agreement lays down a target of limiting global warming to 15 degrees Celsius current climate policies of countries are estimated to put the world on track to achieve 23 degrees Celsius to 25 degrees Celsius warmingResearchers evaluated climate models including those forming the basis of reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC and identified projections showing the worstcase and bestcase scenarios for a context such as droughts in major global agricultural regionsAt 2 degrees Celsius 10 of the 42 climate models examined produce a drought increase that is considerably above the model average at 4 degrees Celsius of warming lead author Emanuele Bevacqua a climate researcher at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental ResearchUFZ in Germany saidRisk of droughts in globally important growing regions is therefore much higher than would be expected from an analysis of model averages the researchers saidThe findings published in the journal Nature underscore the need for governments and institutions to prepare for plausible worstcase scenarios even under moderate levels of warming they saidThe researchers said that until now worstcase extreme global climate outcomes have typically been described using the average results of many climate models at high levels of global warming 3 or 4 degrees CelsiusHowever the approach does not account for the fact that even at moderate levels of global warming individual climate projections for certain regions can be very severe they saidTherefore the team adopted a new approach where they identified sectorspecific drivers of climate impact such as precipitation extremes and droughts as well as regions where vulnerable sectors are located heavy rainfall in densely populated regions droughts in major global agricultural regions and fireconducive weather in forestsThis makes it possible to examine climate changes in locations where they are particularly relevant for specific global risks the researchers saidThe authors show that extreme global climate outcomes may occur even under moderate 2 degrees Celsius warming for several sectorsFor droughts in global key breadbasket regions precipitation extremes over highly populated areas and fire weather extremes across forests global climatic impactdrivers at 2 degrees Celsius of global warming may turn out to be much more extreme than modelaveraged projections at 3 degrees Celsius or 4 degrees Celsius warming they saidResponsible risk assessment should therefore look beyond the most likely ranges projected by climate models and consider extreme outcomes with possible severe societal or environmental consequences Bevacqua saidAs policymakers refine mitigation plans and organizations prepare for future climate risk understanding and stresstesting against these realistic worstcase scenarios will be crucial the researchers saidThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever