Searing Heat Waves Could Become Annual Threat

The scorching, deadly heat waves that today strike only about once every 20 years could become an annual occurrence for more than half the world if nothing is done to curb emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, a new study reported Tuesday.

The work, detailed in the journal Climatic Change, also points to the worst heat waves of the future being much more intense.  The results jibe with other research looking at how heat waves might change as the world warms, as well as those that have found that global warming has already juiced the heat waves we see today.

But if action is taken to significantly curtail emissions, it could make a significant difference in just how bad future heat waves get.

“Mitigation is crucial,” study author Claudia Tebaldi, a senior research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), said in an email.  “We have a lot to gain from limiting greenhouse gas emissions, and [those] benefits will be felt fairly soon” if we do so.

Extreme heat is one of the defining features of global warming.  Climate models have long suggested that heat waves would become more intense and more frequent as Earth’s average temperature continues to rise.  It has already risen nearly 2°F (1°C) since the late 19th century and tipped the odds toward record hot temperatures over record cold ones.

Tebaldi and her co-author Michael Wehner of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory wanted to see how curtailing the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases might affect the severity of future heat waves.  They used an NCAR climate model to look at how the odds of today’s 20-year events — or those that have about a 5 percent chance of occurring in any given year — would shift in the future under scenarios where emissions were and were not curbed.

They found that for more than half of the world’s land area, such heat waves would become an annual event by 2075 (possibly even occurring more than once a year).  Some of the worst affected areas were the northern tiers of North America, Europe and Asia, as well as the central part of South America.

With emissions reductions aimed at keeping warming below 2°C (4°F) by the end of the century, the affected area falls to between 10 and 25 percent.  (More than 100 countries have made pledges toward such a goal.)

“We were fairly surprised by the extent and the size of the benefits we quantify” even by just mid-century, said Tebaldi, who also works as an advisor to Climate Central.

Tebaldi and Wehner also looked at how much more extreme the 1-in-20-year events of the future will be compared to today.  They found that such events in 2050 would be 5.4°F (3°C) hotter than today for 60 percent of the globe’s land area.  For 10 percent such events would be even worse, coming in at 9°F (5°C) hotter than today.

With emissions reductions, those temperatures would be a degree or two lower for large portions of the globe.

Read more at Searing Heat Waves Could Become Annual Threat