Factors on how municipalities deal with this type of knowledge are assessed, with especial focus on the interplay amongst institutional structures and frameworks at the national, regional, and municipal levels. The work analyses how new and updated knowledge in these realms affects policy formation at the municipal level. The focus is on the possible effects on drinking water, cultural heritage, and the natural environment especially floods. The research carried out through the program is improving such knowledge and is providing an overview of the challenges municipalities face, particularly in terms of storms leading to extreme precipitation and floods but also slower changes such as to humidity and runoff. The main objective is to provide a resource website to aid municipalities in facing the challenges of extreme weather and other climate-driven challenges. The Klima Strategic Institute Program focuses on adapting to extreme weather in municipalities. Examples of recent, major weather events are the hurricane in northwest Norway in 1992 and the flood in eastern Norway in 1995. Yet preparing for the likelihood of climate-driven extreme events and developing response strategies are primarily tasks for municipalities. In the future, scientists are hoping to refine and standardize their attribution methods, so that a community hit by a storm, wildfire or other extreme event can learn much more quickly how that event might have been swayed by global warming - and take steps to adapt.Local authorities in Norway have varying abilities to deal with climate-related extremes, such as floods, storms, landslides, and avalanches. But, he added, “not everything is being made demonstrably more severe because of climate change.” Hoerling, a meteorologist at NOAA who edited the collection. “A few events from this past year were judged to have been of such a magnitude that they would not have been possible in the climate of a few hundred years ago,” said Martin P. That was true of Brazil’s brutal drought, which was largely influenced by El Niño, as well as a major snowstorm in the Mid-Atlantic United States. In some cases, scientists either ruled out or could not find a significant role for climate change, effectively arguing that a given weather extreme could just as likely have occurred in a world without global warming. Instead, the editors accept proposals to investigate certain weather events before the results are known, in order to minimize publication bias. Overall, however, attribution science has improved significantly since the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society began publishing its annual investigations into weather extremes six years ago, said Heidi Cullen, chief scientist at Climate Central, a news organization that focuses on climate science.Ĭrucially, however, the journal does not explicitly set out to prove links between specific weather extremes and global warming. And hurricanes are more difficult still, because they occur so rarely. But droughts - which are influenced by a complex interplay of temperature, precipitation and soil moisture - can be trickier to connect to warming trends. Following the review, significant work has. Temperature records are the simplest to link to climate change. The review investigated the adequacy of the states prevention, preparedness, response and recovery arrangements. The study also concluded that more such blobs were likely to occur with further warming, which “will result in a profound shift for people, systems, and species.” But climate attribution remains complexĬlimate attribution remains easier for some weather events than others. The yearly total snowfall was 42.1 inches. The normal yearly precipitation is 39.10. The yearly total precipitation was 36.47 inches. The normal average yearly temperature is 50.7 degrees. The yearly average temperature was 54.2 degrees. Walsh of the University of Alaska, called the blob “unprecedented” and argued that it “cannot be explained without anthropogenic climate warming,” although natural factors such as El Niño and atmospheric variability also played an important role. 2016 was the warmest year ever in Cleveland with an average temperature of 54.2 degrees.
#BIG WEATHER EVENTS 2016 PATCH#
Over the past few years, a large patch of unusually warm water has appeared off the coast of Alaska, popularly known as “the blob.” These warm waters have allowed toxic algae blooms to spread across the region, killing seabirds by the thousands and forcing local fisheries to close.Ī new study, led by John E.