Natural disasters increasingly linked to climate change, new report warns

'This is a real world analysis of what is actually happening, rather than a projection of what might happen in the future,' says author Richard Black

Extreme weather events such as Hurricane Harvey are increasingly being linked to climate change in scientific studies (AFP/Getty)

Climate change is increasing the risk of extreme weather events, including droughts, flooding and heatwaves, according to a new report.

Researchers from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, a non profit organisation that supports debate on climate change and energy issues, analysed 59 studies which looked at climate change and extreme weather.

All had been published since the Paris climate summit two years ago.

They concluded that 41 of the studies demonstrated climate change had made extreme weather events more intense and more long-lived. These included droughts in Syria to Storm Desmond, which battered the UK in 2015.

The harm inflicted by these events was estimated at around $8bn (£5.9bn) in economic damage and resulted in at least 4,000 deaths.

“Just a few years ago it was hard to say more about any storm, drought or heatwave than it was ‘consistent with what science predicts’,” said the report’s author, Richard Black, a director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.

As climate science has advanced, scientists have become increasingly able to not just make future predictions of climate change’s impact, but also look for its effects in current weather events, he added.

“This is a real world analysis of what is actually happening, rather than a projection of what might happen in the future,” he said. "This report shows that increasingly, [scientists are] finding that specific events are made more likely or more damaging by climate change."

The effects were most obvious for heatwaves, as the connection between increased general temperatures and increased temperatures during a hot spell are relatively straightforward.

Storms and hurricanes are more complicated. Although such events are strongly linked to climate change, they are complex phenomena with many contributing factors, making the links more ambiguous.

“We’re now finding that for many kinds of extreme weather event, especially heatwaves and extreme rainfall, we can be quite confident about the effect of climate change,” said Dr Friederike Otto, deputy director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the report.

“This ECIU report shows just how quickly knowledge is accumulating, and I think it’s only going to accelerate.”

Mr Black added: “Two years’ worth of studies shows that climate change is affecting heatwaves, droughts and rainfall right now."

The new report comes shortly before another climate summit in Paris, the One Planet Summit, which is set to focus on the economics of climate change.

Soenke Kreft, leader of Munich Climate Insurance Initiative at the United Nations University, who was not involved in the report, said understanding the links between natural disasters and climate change was important, as it can play a role in convincing policymakers and citizens of the threat posed by climate change and encouraging them to take action.

“Attribution science is an important field of research that has the potential to transform public narratives into more specific prevention measures of risks,” he said. “It also helps to underscore the international responsibilities in supporting the protection of communities by prevention measures and insurance related mechanisms, and providing swift assistance in post disaster situations."

Mr Black added: “The science shows that the further and faster climate change progresses the larger this effect is likely to be, therefore the best way to restrain this is to curb global emissions."