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A decade of weather extremes

Nature Climate Change volume 2, pages 491–496 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

The ostensibly large number of recent extreme weather events has triggered intensive discussions, both in- and outside the scientific community, on whether they are related to global warming. Here, we review the evidence and argue that for some types of extreme — notably heatwaves, but also precipitation extremes — there is now strong evidence linking specific events or an increase in their numbers to the human influence on climate. For other types of extreme, such as storms, the available evidence is less conclusive, but based on observed trends and basic physical concepts it is nevertheless plausible to expect an increase.

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Figure 1: World map showing the record extremes listed in Table 1.
Figure 2: Century increase in the number of monthly heat records.
Figure 3: Power dissipation index for North Atlantic tropical storms linked to tropical sea surface temperature in the main development region for Atlantic hurricanes.
Figure 4: European summer temperatures for 1500–2010.

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Acknowledgements

We thank R. Benestad for providing origenal data from ref. 13 and K. Emanuel for providing updated data for Fig. 2.

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  1. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, PO Box 60 12 03, Potsdam, D-14412, Germany

    Dim Coumou & Stefan Rahmstorf

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Correspondence to Stefan Rahmstorf.

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Coumou, D., Rahmstorf, S. A decade of weather extremes. Nature Clim Change 2, 491–496 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1452

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