It’s not rocket science: Climate change was behind this summer’s extreme weather

Summer 2018 saw an unprecedented spate of extreme floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires break out across North America, Europe and Asia. The scenes played out on our television screens and in our social media feeds. This is, as I stated at the time, the face of climate change.

Thick smoke covers a beach near the village of Sarti in Halkidiki,
 northern Greece, as a wildifire rages in the area on Oct. 25.

It’s not rocket science. A warmer ocean evaporates more moisture into the atmosphere — so you get worse flooding from coastal storms (think Hurricanes Harvey and Florence). Warmer soils evaporate more moisture into the atmosphere — so you get worse droughts (think California or Syria). Global warming shifts the extreme upper tail of the “bell curve” toward higher temperatures, so you get more frequent and intense heat waves (think summer 2018 just about anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere). Combine heat and drought, and you get worse wildfires (again, think California).

Read the OpEd from The Washington Post by Michael Mann - “It’s not rocket science: Climate change was behind this summer’s extreme weather.”