Credit Danny Lawson/Press Association, via AP; Haris Sadikin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; Janet Blackmon Morgan/The Sun News, via AP; David Gray/Reuters
December 30, 2015
By Justin Gillis
...But that natural pattern of variability is not the whole story. (click here) This El
Niño, one of the strongest on record, comes atop a long-term heating of
the planet caused by mankind’s emissions of greenhouse gases. A large
body of scientific evidence says those emissions are making certain
kinds of extremes, such as heavy rainstorms and intense heat waves, more
frequent.
Coincidence or not, every kind of trouble that the experts have been warning about for years seems to be occurring at once.
“As
scientists, it’s a little humbling that we’ve kind of been saying this
for 20 years now, and it’s not until people notice daffodils coming out
in December that they start to say, ‘Maybe they’re right,’ ” said Myles
R. Allen, a climate scientist at Oxford University in Britain.
Dr.
Allen’s group, in collaboration with American and Dutch researchers,
recently completed a report calculating that extreme rainstorms in the
British Isles in December had become about 40 percent more likely as a
consequence of human emissions. That document — inspired by a storm in
early December that dumped stupendous rains, including 13 inches on one
town in 24 hours — was barely finished when the skies opened up again....
