2 days ago
Nasa data reveals 'alarming' rise in intensity of weather events
New data from Nasa has revealed a dramatic rise in the intensity of weather events such as droughts and floods over the past five years.
The study shows that such extreme events are becoming more frequent, longer lasting and more severe, with last year's figures reaching twice that of the 2003-2020 average.
The steepness of the rise was not foreseen. The researchers say they are amazed and alarmed by the latest figures from the watchful eye of Nasa's Grace satellite, which tracks environmental changes in the planet.
They say climate change is the most likely cause of the apparent trend, even though the intensity of extremes appears to have soared even faster than global temperatures. The data is not yet peer-reviewed, and researchers said they would need another 10 or more years to confirm to conclusively call it a trend.
The data has been co-produced by Dr Bailing Li, from the Hydrological Sciences Laboratory of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center – affiliated with the University of Maryland's Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, who told the Guardian: 'We can't prove causation yet – we would need a much longer dataset. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly what's happening here, but other events suggest that (global) warming is the driving factor.
We are seeing more and more extreme events round the world, so this is certainly alarming.
Her colleague Dr Matthew Rodell, chief of hydrologic sciences at Goddard, also counselled caution over the latest data, but admitted that he too was worried about the apparent acceleration of a trend in destructive events. 'It's certainly scary,' he said.
The earlier part of the Nasa time series was published in Nature Water in 2023. The researchers used a mathematical formula to calculate the total effect of a weather event in terms of severity measured by the total area affected, the duration of the event and how wet or dry it was.
The paper warned that disturbance to the water system would be one of the most significant consequences of the climate crisis.
The paper noted that the intensity of extremes was strongly correlated with global mean temperature, more so than with El Niño, the influential ocean current, or other climate indicators, suggesting that continued warming of the planet will cause more frequent, more severe, and longer and/or larger droughts and floods.
The Nasa researchers produced the updated statistics at the request of the Oxford-based research organisation Global Water Intelligence, whose head, Christopher Gasson, said water companies are in the firing line of climate change – facing too much water or too little water – or both.
He said most water companies are completely unprepared to cope with the changes under way.
'This is extremely scary,' he said. 'The industry needs to attract investment on a massive scale.'
Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization's [url=
report[/url] calculates an 80% chance that at least one of the next five years will top 2024 as the warmest year on record.
It says global temperatures are set to continue to increase over the next five years, increasing climate risks and impacts on societies, economies, and sustainable development.
The unpredictability of extreme events revealed in the new data is likely to alarm the insurance industry, which bases current premiums on previous trend data. This could have widespread effects across entire economies.
The Guardian
