Environmental News Network - Too Dry, Too Hot, Or Too Wet: Increasing Weather Persistence in European Summer

Details: By Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research; 06.Dec

Global warming makes long lasting weather situations in the Northern hemisphere‘s summer months more likely – which in turn leads to more extreme weather events, a novel analysis of atmospheric images and data finds.

Cheryl Porter

Global warming makes long lasting weather situations in the Northern hemisphere‘s summer months more likely – which in turn leads to more extreme weather events, a novel analysis of atmospheric images and data finds. These events include heatwaves, droughts, intense rainy periods. Especially in Europe, but also in Russia, persistent weather patterns have increased in number and intensity over the last decades with weather extremes occurring simultaneously at different locations.

“In our study, we show that persistent weather conditions have an increasing similarity in summer over the North Atlantic, Europe and Siberia, favoring more pronounced extreme weather events. In Europe alone, about 70% of the land area is already affected by more persistent weather situations,” says Peter Hoffmann from the Potsdam-Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), lead author of the study published in Nature scientific reports. “This means that people, especially in densely populated Europe, will likely experience more and also stronger and more dangerous weather events.”

Regions of the world where an increase in persistent weather conditions is observed in summer (Jun-Aug). (Photo Credit: PIK Potsdam)

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Too Dry, Too Hot, Or Too Wet: Increasing Weather Persistence in European Summer