How heatwaves will change around the world for every 1°C increase in global average temperatures
From the UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES
Summer in some regions of the world will become one long heatwave even if global average temperatures rise only 2°C above pre-industrial levels and certain regions may become close to unliveable if temperatures increase by 5°C.
CREDIT Anna Jiménez Calaf on Unsplash
Even with just a 1.5°C increase in global temperatures there are significant changes to the length, intensity and frequency of heat waves in every part of the world.
That’s the finding of new research by Dr Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate system Science published today in Scientific Reports that divides the globe into 26 regions and looks at how heatwaves will change with every 1°C rise in global temperatures.
When all the regions are combined, for every 1°C of warming during summer the researchers found there would likely be:
- An extra 14.8-28.2 heatwave days.
- Heatwaves would be 3.4-17.5 days longer.
- The peak intensity of heatwaves will increase 1.2°C-1.9°C.
But it’s when the researchers drilled down to the region-by-region level that the most startling changes appeared.
“We were particularly surprised by the alarmingly fast increase in heatwave days in the tropics where some regions transition to an almost constant heatwave state with just a 2°C rise,” said Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick.
“We also found that even with just a 1.5°C increase in global temperatures, almost all regions started to experience heatwave events every four years that once only occurred every 30 years. If global temperatures were to rise by 5°C such events would occur every year.”
By dividing the globe into 26 distinct regions, the research also highlighted the wide variation in heatwave responses across the world. There was a much sharper increase in peak temperatures of heatwaves over the Mediterranean and Central Asia.
Meanwhile tropical regions saw many more additional heatwave days and longer continuous heatwaves than other parts of the world.
The only decline to appear across the research was the number of discrete heatwave events in two regions, Central America and Eastern Africa. But this was not good news because these regions also saw the greatest increase in heatwave days.
Effectively what had once been two heatwaves had now merged into one long heatwave.
“This study is yet another wake-up call to policymakers that we need to act on limiting the rise in global average temperatures due to human caused climate change,” Dr Kirkpatrick said.
“Without prompt action, there could be disastrous consequences for many regions around the world.”
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Paper: Changes in regional heatwave characteristics as a function of increasing global temperature. (doi:10.1038/s41598-017-12520-2)
See this interactive map showing how heatwaves will change with global warming
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Note.
We’re coming into summer here in the SH.
The ‘university’ of New South Wales is timing its climate propaganda to coincide with the first few days of warm weather after a cold, wet and snowy winter for much of Southern Australia.
It’s like the old commercial radio tactic of scheduling your ice cream adverts to run only when the temperature goes above a certain point!
‘Heatwaves would be 3.4-17.5 days longer.’
They use decimals to show they have a sense of humor.
To be humorous for a diverse crowd you have to be more obvious such as “3.432 – 17.483 days longer”. So I think it was probably just ordinary ignorance.
Like using climate change as de-facto global warming, heat is used as de-facto heatwave. Climate change is a vast subject and same is the case with heatwaves that follow the localised circulation pattern in summer — heatwaves — and in winter — coldwaves.
People are experiencing temperature variations at any given place with seasons and years.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Doc, WE all know that, but tell THEM that.
Garbage science once again…. We already know that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO can’t even measure temperature or design data gathering processes that give meaningful results.
Their temperature data is so untrustworthy that it cannot even be used for science, but apparently it is perfect for the politics of CAGW.
I like the idea of heatwaves in Greenland. And increasing heatwaves in Sahara. Gimme a break.
Note also their map has again a huge Greenland compared to Africa. Tells something how much they think Africa.
I can still get you in on the ground floor before the prices go ballistic-
http://internationalpropertydirectory.com/greenland/property/distressed-property-greenland.asp
Glacier allotments are where it’s all about to happen but mums the word until the deposit is down and you can start planning the grape varieties 😉
“This study is yet another wake-up call to policymakers that we need to act on limiting the rise in global average temperatures due to human caused climate change,”
Probably the first thing written at the start of the project. Need to go through it thoroughly but I suspect the definition of a heat wave is a BOM index that would make just 2 degree increase in min and max temperatures look like a 200% increase in heat waves. Going from memory, it was 3 days of both min and max above a threshold that was the long term 90% percentile. Basically, the difference between a heatwave and not would be an imperceptible difference in one if those.
Cold spells kill 20 times more people than heatwaves. More heatwaves and less cold spells is good news!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3090281/Cold-snap-20-times-lethal-heatwave.html
As a science-ish Canadian layman, just looking at the regional breakouts for Canada on that “disaster” map have me scratching my head, and they certainly don’t engender much in the way of confidence in either their inputs or results. Imputing that northern Mexico will be similarly affected as northern Alberta (or that their climates are anywhere at all similar, despite being “western North America” seems implicit proof that they are neither excellent nor climatologists. Southern Alberta isn’t even the same as southern Manitoba. And definitely not the same as Vancouver Island.
It’s incredibly disturbing that this kind of BS ever even sees the light of day, Yes, we are doomed, not because of higher temperatures, but because of the weak minded fools who allow political ideology to drive them to the depths of stupidity.
How does one reconcile this kind of nonsense with reality? According to my slide rule, Specific Heat of the ocean is 3 orders of magnitude (to base 10) greater than Specific Heat of the Atmosphere. Oceans cover 71% of the planet, and a pretty efficient heat exchange process (evaporation) keeps air temperature within 10*F +/- of SST. Never mind the hot spots, we’re talking AGT so what’s the big deal with 1, 2, or 8.5 degrees of air temp increase which will raise the ocean temperature by 0.001, 0.002 or even 0.0085 degrees. Who would notice?