Extreme temperatures 'especially likely for next four years'

Source: The Guardian

Extreme temperatures 'especially likely for next four years'

Cyclical natural phenomena that affect planet’s climate will amplify effect of manmade global warming, scientists warn

Jonathan Watts
Tue 14 Aug 2018 16.00 BST

The world is likely to see more extreme temperatures in the coming four years as natural warming reinforces manmade climate change, according to a new global forecasting system.

Following a summer of heatwaves and forest fires in the northern hemisphere, the study in the journal Nature Communications suggests there will be little respite for the planet until at least 2022, and possibly not even then.

Rising greenhouse gas emissions are steadily adding to the upward pressure on temperatures, but humans do not feel the change as a straight line because the effects are diminished or amplified by phases of natural variation.

From 1998 to 2010, global temperatures were in a “hiatus” as natural cooling (from ocean circulation and weather systems) offset anthropogenic global warming. But the planet has now entered almost the opposite phase, when natural trends are boosting man-made effects.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/aug/14/extreme-temperatures-especially-likely-for-next-four-years

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Related: A novel probabilistic forecast system predicting anomalously warm 2018-2022 reinforcing the long-term global warming trend (Nature Communications)