GLOBAL HEATING - Human-caused heating behind extreme droughts in Syria, Iraq and Iran, study finds. Millions of people’s lives wrecked by droughts that used to happen once every 250 years but now expected once a decade. Guardian Damian Carrington  Wed 8 Nov 2023  Extreme droughts that have wrecked the lives of millions of people in Syria, Iraq and Iran since 2020 would not have happened without human-caused global heating, a study has found. The climate crisis means such long-lasting and severe droughts are no longer rare, the analysis showed. In the Tigris-Euphrates basin, which covers large parts of Syria and Iraq, droughts of this severity happened about once every 250 years before global heating – now they are expected once a decade.In Iran, extreme drought occurred once every 80 years in the past but now strikes every five years on average in today’s hotter world. Further global heating, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, will make these droughts even more common. The study also found that existing vulnerability from years of war and political instability had reduced people’s ability to cope with the drought, turning it into a humanitarian disaster.

The researchers said it was vital to plan for more frequent droughts in the future.“Our study has shown that human-caused climate change is already making life considerably harder for tens of millions of people in west Asia,” said Prof Mohammad Rahimi, at Semnan University, Iran. “And with further warming, Syria, Iraq and Iran will become even harsher places to live.” Rana El Hajj, at the Red Cross Red Crescent climate centre, said: “While conflict itself increases vulnerability to drought by contributing to land degradation, weakened water management and deteriorating infrastructure, research also shows that climate change, in this region specifically, has acted as a threat multiplier [for conflict].” Dr Friederike Otto, at Imperial College London, UK, said: “Droughts like this will continue to intensify until we stop burning fossil fuels. If the world does not agree to phase out fossil fuels at [UN climate summit] Cop28, everyone loses: more people will suffer from water shortages, more farmers will be displaced and many people will pay more for food at supermarkets.” The Guardian revealed in 2022 how hundreds of scientific studies now show that human-caused global heating is driving more frequent and deadly disasters across the planet. Leading climate scientists warned in August that the “crazy” extreme weather of 2023 was just the “tip of the iceberg” compared with the even worse impacts to come.

The study was conducted by the World Weather Attribution group.  The study was conducted by the World Weather Attribution group. The researchers used weather data and climate models to compare how droughts have changed in the region since global heating has pushed up temperatures by about 1.2C.  The searing temperatures increased the evaporation of the little rain that fell, resulting in the drought being classified as “extreme” on the US Drought Monitor scale. Without the climate crisis, the past three years would not have passed any threshold for drought.The effects of the drought have been wide-ranging, causing millions to flee rural areas, soaring food prices, wildfires and air pollution and fishing rivers and lakes to dry up......read on       https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/08/extreme-droughts-in-syria-iraq-and-iran-since-2020   

Climate change made Hurricane Helene and other 2024 disasters more damaging, scientists find. 

Rising global temperatures are amplifying deadly extreme weather events.Yale Climate Connections Dana Nuccitelli October 9, 2024 Sadly Hurricane Helene, wildfires in the Amazon, an extreme monsoon downpour in India, a heat wave during the Summer Olympics, and other dangerous and devastating weather events in 2024 were all made more likely and dam aging by climate change, scientists have found. Climate scientists quantified the link by running thousands of simulations in climate models, some that included and some that did not include the effects of human-caused climate pollution in the atmosphere. They also examined past and present weather data to see how the probability of these kinds of events has changed in a hotter world. This approach, known as attribution science, is a relatively new branch of climate science. It has enabled scientists to conclude that human-caused climate change made many recent extreme weather events much more damaging, deadly, and expensive than they would otherwise have beenClimate change increased Hurricane Helene’s and Milton’s potential destructiveness.........Hurricane Milton, which formed in the Gulf of Mexico in early October, offers an example of how climate change amplifies extreme weather. As a result of high water temperatures, the storm rapidly intensified from a tropical storm to reach Category 5 status. The scientists at Climate Central estimated that those unusually warm sea surface temperatures were made up to 400 to 800 times more likely by climate change. Hurricane Helene made landfall on September 26, 2024, near Perry, Florida, as a Category 4 with 140 miles per hour winds. The storm is being blamed for 247 deaths, with hundreds more still missing, making it the fourth-deadliest U.S. hurricane since at least 1963. And a new study published in Nature found that the death toll associated with hurricanes is dramatically underestimated, perhaps by hundreds of times, due to knock-on effects lasting for over a decade.Early estimates have placed the economic costs of the storm at up to $47 billion.
On Wednesday, the  science group World Weather Attribution released an analysis of how climate change affected Hurricane Helene. Their main findings.....

• Hurricanes as intense as Hurricane Helene are today about 2.5 times more likely in the region: They would be expected to occur on average every 130 years in a preindustrial climate but now have a one-in-53 chance in any given year.
• Hurricane Helene’s wind speeds on the coast of Florida were about 13 miles per hour or 11% more intense due to climate change.
• Climate change increased Hurricane Helene’s rainfall by about 10%. This level of rainfall that led to catastrophic flooding in the Appalachians has shifted from a once-in-115-year event to a once-in-70-year event today as a result of climate change.
• The high sea temperatures that fueled Hurricane Helene were made 200 to 500 times more likely by climate change.

“Yet again, our study has shown that hurricanes will keep getting worse if humans keep burning fossil fuels and subsequently warming the planet,” Friederike Otto, lead of World Weather Attribution and senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London, said in a news release. “Americans shouldn’t have to fear hurricanes more violent than Helene – we have all the knowledge and technology needed to lower demand and replace oil, gas, and coal with renewable energy.” A 5% increase in hurricane winds increases a hurricane’s destructive power by about 50% since hurricane damage grows exponentially with intensity. Thus, the 11% increase in Helene’s winds found by the World Weather Attribution group likely made Helene’s winds more than twice as destructive. And it is hurricane winds that drive storm surge, so although surge was not evaluated directly in the group’s report, it can be inferred that the destructive surge from Helene was made worse by climate change (apart from the separate long-term increase in both surge and everyday water levels caused by warming-induced sea level rise). A separate rapid analysis by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that climate change caused over 50% more rainfall during Hurricane Helene in some parts of Georgia and the Carolinas and that global warming made the high amount of rainfall up to 20 times more likely in these areas.....and as the damage and related costs rise exponentially the CO2 emissions still increase....read on     https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2024/10/climate-change-made-hurricane-helene-and-other-2024-disasters-more-damaging-scientists-find/?utm_source=Weekly+News+from+Yale+Climate+Connections&utm_campaign=b7bc830d54-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_10_08_06_39&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-b7bc830d54-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

GLOBAL HEATING Confronting the reality of climate emergency, George Monbiot’s summary of the planetary science of climate heating, nature destruction and Earth system collapse this century, and the disintegration of civilised society, is excellent (The ‘flickering’ of Earth systems is warning us: act now, or see our already degraded paradise lost, 31 October). My only caveat is his repeated use of the word “could”, which overeggs the possibility of an alternative future where the biospheric tipping points into catastrophe are avoided......