‘Impossible’ Weather Increasingly Blamed on Climate Change

Today may be the day when the impossible becomes possible—based on the number of headlines in recent days saying pretty much that.

A slew of recent articles this week focus on studies and research reporting on how unlikely the weather, extreme weather in particular, is without a changing climate.

Several articles keyed in on the international attention focused on the sweltering Olympics:

Heatwave baking Paris Olympics ‘impossible’ without climate change, study says. That’s a Toronto Star headline.

Politico also took a crack: Heatwave blanketing Olympics ‘impossible’ without climate change.

Here are a few others:

Mediterranean heat wave ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change: Scientists
Cerrado’s current drought impossible without human-caused climate change: Study
Some July Heat: ‘Virtually Impossible’ Without Climate Change, Analysis Finds
Typhoons forming closer to coast due to climate change: Study. “Impossible” is absent, but it is about weather that is highly unlikely without climate change.

And if you’re sitting in your office feeling the heat right now, keep on reading down to the “High Heat” section below.

Climate and GDP

Current projected future economic impacts from climate change may understate the severity of global warming’s effect on commerce and livelihoods—it may actually be three to five times larger than estimates, a new paper shows.

The research, How Much Will Global Warming Cool Global Growth?, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in July, seeks to answer the question: “Does a permanent rise in temperature decrease the level or growth rate of GDP in affected countries?”

Differing answers to that question have led to diverging answers “by an order of magnitude,” the authors write.

The paper combines evidence on economic growth with new estimates of the dynamic effects of temperature on GDP to argue that warming has persistent effects on growth. However, the impact isn’t necessarily permanent. It may eventually fade.

“In this paper we estimate the dynamic effects of temperature on GDP and find that

they build and persist, but eventually level off,” the researchers write. “Thus permanently higher temperatures appear to hurt the level of long run GDP per capita but not its long run growth rate.”

Accounting for Climate Change

A global accounting body is proposing new guidance on how companies can better show the impact of climate change on their financial performance.

Norms written by the International Accounting Standards Board are applied by listed companies in more than 140 jurisdictions, including the European Union (the U.S. has its own rules), according to a Reuters article on Insurance Journal this week.

The IASB’s guidance is intended to apply the board’s existing rules for reporting climate change impacts, with the aim of showing investors how sustainability disclosures impact a company’s financial figures on assets, liabilities, income and expenses, according to Reuters.

The news service reported that investors have said they want to know whether assets will retain their value going forward in a warming world.

“They expressed concerns that information about climate-related uncertainties in financial statements was sometimes insufficient or appeared to be inconsistent with information provided outside the financial statements,” the IASB said in a statement.

High Heat

Nearly half of Americans could experience heat made at least three times more likely due to climate change on Friday—including those living in portions of Canada and Mexico— through Aug. 8.

That’s according to Climate Central, a nonprofit news organization that analyzes and reports on climate science.

Forecasts call for a record-breaking 148 million Americans to experience Climate Shift Index values of 3 or higher tomorrow—meaning local temperatures made at least 3 times more likely because of climate change.

Weather service AccuWeather on Wednesday issued its 2024 U.S. Fall Forecast, which shows summer heat is expected to last well into autumn across much of America, bringing an increased risk of wildfires and severe weather.

Record-high temperatures have been seen in several cities across California, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and North Carolina this summer, and more record temperatures may follow in the fall, according to AccuWeather.

Past columns:

Topics Trends Climate Change

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