- Title: Extreme weather more frequent due to climate change - climate professor
- Date: 4th January 2023
- Summary: BUFFALO, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (DECEMBER 23, 2022) (REUTERS) (MUTE) DRONE FOOTAGE OF SNOW-COVERED NEIGHBOURHOOD VARIOUS OF PEOPLE SHOVELLING SNOW
- Embargoed: 18th January 2023 15:31
- Keywords: ARTIFICIAL SNOW CLIMATE CHANGE EXTREME WEATHER GLOBAL WARMING HEATWAVES
- Location: VARIOUS
- City: VARIOUS
- Country: Various
- Topics: Climate Adaptation and Solution,Climate Change,Environment,General News
- Reuters ID: LVA007034804012023RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Climate change is making extremes in weather more frequent and heatwaves more intense, climate scientist Professor Peter Stott from the University of Exeter said in an interview on Wednesday (January 4).
Record-high winter temperatures swept across parts of Europe over the new year, bringing calls from activists for faster action against climate change while offering short-term respite to governments struggling with high gas prices.
Hundreds of sites have seen temperature records smashed in the past days, from Switzerland to Poland to Hungary, which registered its warmest Christmas Eve in Budapest and saw temperatures climb to 18.9 degrees Celsius (66.02°F) on Jan 1.
In France, where the night of Dec. 30/31 was the warmest since records began, temperatures climbed to nearly 25C in the southwest on New Year's Day while normally bustling European ski resorts were deserted due to a lack of snow.
"What we're witnessing at the moment is extreme weather as you've seen, across Europe and records being broken by large margins," said Stott.
"Now we expect extreme weather from time to time but I think there is a link with climate change here because climate change is making these extremes more frequent and making heat waves more intense and it's really striking what we're seeing across Europe at the moment and it's showing us the vulnerability we have, even in relatively wealthy parts of the world, it's showing the impact for example on the skiing industry in the European mountains," he added.
Scientists have not yet analysed the specific ways in which climate change affected the recent high temperatures, but January's warm weather spell fits into the longer-term trend of rising temperatures due to human-caused climate change.
It follows another year of extreme weather events that scientists concluded were directly linked to global heating, including deadly heatwaves in Europe and India, and flooding in Pakistan.
"What may seem like a relatively gradual increase in global temperature is going to have a very substantial impact on extremes. What it is doing -- and we're seeing this more and more frequently, is it's making previously unprecedented extremes much more likely, it's making the chances of record breaking extremes much more likely," said Stott.
French national weather agency Meteo France attributed the anomalous temperatures to a mass of warm air moving to Europe from subtropical zones.
It struck during the busy skiing season, leading to cancelled trips and empty slopes. Resorts in the northern Spanish regions of Asturias, Leon and Cantabria have been closed since the Christmas holidays due to lack of snow.
On Jahorina above Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina, home to the 1984 Winter Olympics, it should have been one of the busiest weeks of the season. Instead, the chair-lifts hung lifeless above the grassy slopes. In one guesthouse a couple ate dinner alone in the restaurant, the only guests.
The unusually mild temperatures have offered some short-term relief to European governments who have struggled to secure scarce gas supplies and keep a lid on soaring prices after Russia slashed deliveries of the fuel to Europe.
European governments have said this energy crisis should hasten their shift from fossil fuels to clean energy - but in the short term, plummeting Russian fuel supplies have left them racing to secure extra gas from elsewhere.
Gas demand has fallen for heating in many countries, helping to reduce prices.
The benchmark front-month gas price was trading at 70.25 euros per megawatt hour on Wednesday morning, its lowest level since February 2022 before Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The head of Italy's energy authority predicted that regulated energy bills in the country would fall this month, if the milder temperatures help keep gas prices lower.
However, a note by Eurointelligence cautioned that this should not lull governments into complacency or remove a sense of urgency over Europe's energy crisis.
(Production: Dina Selim) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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