Tropical storm Elsa is expected to dump
several
inches of rain along with strong winds
in the area
but it could also break up some of the
intense heat the region's been
experiencing
there's a growing body of scientific
research showing climate change is
making heat waves
longer hotter and more dangerous in the
Pacific Northwest
extreme heat is contributing to hundreds
of deaths in recent weeks
we asked Anthony Broccoli co-director of
Rutgers Climate Institute
about the future impact as part of our
ongoing series on the human stories of
climate change
Peril and Promise. Professor Broccoli
heat waves are not new but is climate
change
to blame for just how severe
these situations have gotten climate
change
does affect not only the severity of
heat waves but also the frequency
of hot days hot days are going to happen
more often
in today's climate than they would have
happened in the past
and can we point to man-made climate
change
versus what would be occurring naturally
as
progressing some of these events
yes there are scientific methods that
are used
to try to do what's called climate
attribution
to try to find out what aspects of a
particular
extreme weather event were
affected by climate change and the way
to think about it
is that climate change affects the
probability
of an extreme weather event happening
so for instance the heat wave in the
pacific northwest
and western canada that happened last
month
there's been a recent study that
indicated that that
heat wave was 150 more times
likely to occur in today's climate as a
result of climate change
than it would have been without climate
change
i mean so this is very much a now
problem
not a future problem as it was sort of
discussed
in decades past should we expect this to
be a foreshadowing
of what's to come perhaps for our area
you're absolutely right we're already
seeing the effects of climate change
for example the weather station we have
on campus at Rutgers has been
recording temperatures for over 100
years
if we go back to say the 1970s during
that period there were on
average about 15 days
a year that reached the 90s or higher
in the last decade we're now up around
30 days a year
reaching the 90s or higher and of course
that's part of a trend and if warming
continues
we're going to see more and more of
those extreme heat days
and eventually some of them will
probably be more
extreme than anything we've seen in that
100 years of records
yeah and does it tell you anything about
just how quickly that pace has quickened
you mentioned just in the last 10 years
does any data that you're looking at
lead you to believe that that time span
may shorten
if the situation continues as it is
well what we've been seeing is
even though if you look at temperatures
over the globe and here in New Jersey
the past 100 years has seen a rise in
temperatures
but that rise has accelerated beginning
in around 1970.
so since 1970 we've been warming at
about twice the rate
that we would calculate if we looked
back over
let's say the last century or a little
bit more
so we have seen an acceleration the
question is of course what will happen
in the future
and what happens in the future depends
in large part
on how much more carbon dioxide and
other greenhouse gases go
into the atmosphere
that is the big unknown Anthony Brockley
thank you so much for your time today
my pleasure
lead funding for Peril and Promise is provided by
Dr. P. Roy Vagelos and Diana T. Vagelos
major support is provided by the
Marc Haas Foundation
and Sue and Edgar Wachenheim, III and the
Cheryl and Philip Milstein family
