The head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies reports in a new study that the recent heat wave, severe storms and flooding seen around the world can only be attributed to human-caused global warming. James Hanson, the expert leading the study, and his team concludes that the odds of extreme temperature occurrences have grown from 1 in 300 through the 1980s to one-in-10 today. Hansen discussed his findings with PBS News.
James Hansen: “What we show is that there is a connection to these extreme weather events that we’ve been seeing. The probability of these unusually hot spells, forest fires, and extreme droughts has increased substantially over the last few decades.”
More than 3,100 daily heat records were set in the United States last month, a rate of more than 100 per day. In an article previewing his study, Hansen writes: “It is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.”