The increase in severe weather events comport with climatological forecasts. Catastrophic flooding in Europe and conflagrations in the Northwestern United States will require extensive scientific analysis to assess the extent to which the reality of anthropological climate change contributed, but such natural disasters do nothing to sustain the remnant of ideologues in their pathological denial.
One certitude, given the impact of the documented increase in extremes - droughts, downpours, more frequent and severe heatwaves, hurricanes, blizzards, etc., is that willful ignorance would come with a devastating cost if normal folks were to ignore science and substitute ideology. Fortunately, rigorous, dispassionate study will not be impeded by the strident revilements of the raging dissenters.
Studies have shown an increase in extreme downpours as the world warms, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations-backed group that reports on the science and impacts of global warming, has said that the frequency of these events will increase as temperatures continue to rise...
Dr. van Oldenborgh is one of the primary scientists with World Weather Attribution, a loose-knit group that quickly analyzes specific extreme weather events with regard to any climate-change impact. He said the group, which just finished a rapid analysis of the heat wave that struck the Pacific Northwest in late June, was discussing whether they would study the German floods.
One reason for stronger downpours has to do with basic physics: warmer air holds more moisture, making it more likely that a specific storm will produce more precipitation. The world has warmed by a little more than 1 degree Celsius (about 2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 19th century, when societies began pumping huge amounts of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.
For every 1 Celsius degree of warming, air can hold 7 percent more moisture. As a result, said Hayley Fowler, a professor of climate change impacts at Newcastle University in England, “These kinds of storm events will increase in intensity.”
And although it is still a subject of debate, there are studies that suggest rapid warming in the Arctic is affecting the jet stream, by reducing the temperature difference between northern and southern parts of the Northern Hemisphere. One effect in summer and fall, Dr. Fowler said, is that the high-altitude, globe-circling air current is weakening and slowing down.
“That means the storms have to move more slowly,” Dr. Fowler said. The storm that caused the recent flooding was practically stationary, she noted. The combination of more moisture and a stalled storm system can lead to extra-heavy rains over a given area.
Kai Kornhuber, a climate scientist with the Earth Institute of Columbia University, said that his and his colleagues’ research, and papers from other scientists, drew similar conclusions about slowing weather systems. “They all point in the same direction — that the summertime mid-latitude circulation, the jet stream, is slowing down and constitutes a more persistent weather pattern” that means extreme events like heat waves and pounding rains are likely to go on and on...
The European storm is “part of this bigger picture of extremes we’ve been seeing all along the Northern Hemisphere this summer,” she said, which include the heat in the American West and Pacific Northwest, intense rainfall and cooler temperatures in the Midwest, and heat waves in Scandinavia and Siberia.
“It’s never in isolation when it comes to an odd configuration of the jet stream,” Dr. Francis said. “One extreme in one place is always accompanied by extremes of different types.”
“It is all connected, and it’s all the same story, really,” she added.
Whether a science hater sputters against all of science, or focuses his ire upon microbiologists, geologists, botanists, biophysics, or the plethora of practitioners of other scientific disciplines including medical specialties, is certainly peculiar, but hardly impactful as the world's scientific bodies persist in the advancement of their specializations, and that knowledge they accrue benefits all - even those whose dogma compels them to rail against it.