WASHINGTON — As greenhouse-gas emissions rise, North America is likely to experience more droughts and excessive heat in some regions even as intense downpours and hurricanes pound others more often, according to a report issued Thursday by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program.
The 162-page study, which was led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, provides the most comprehensive assessment yet of how global warming has helped to transform the climate of the United States and Canada over the past 50 years — and how it might do so in the future.
Coming at a time when record flooding is ravaging the Midwest, the report paints a grim scenario in which severe weather will exact a heavy toll. It warned that extreme weather events “are among the most serious challenges to society in coping with a changing climate.”
While the Southwest is likely to face even more intense droughts, the scientists wrote, heavy downpours will become more frequent in some other parts of the country because of increased water vapor in the air.
“This report addresses one of the most frequently asked questions about global warming: What will happen to weather and climate extremes?” said one of the report’s two co-chairs, Thomas Karl, who directs NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
He added that the report, which synthesizes the findings of more than 100 academic papers, “concludes that we are now witnessing and will increasingly experience more extreme weather and climate events.”
The authors found that the past decade has seen fewer cold snaps than any other 10-year period in the historical record dating back to 1895. Under a middle-range scenario of future greenhouse-gas emissions, climate models indicate that by midcentury, extremely hot days that now occur only once every 20 years will occur every three years.
Richard Moss, vice president and managing director for climate change at the World Wildlife Fund, said in an interview that the report was prepared by “an A-list of authors” and is “really frightening.”
In a conference call with reporters, Karl and the other co-chair, Gerald Meehl, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said there is no doubt that human-generated heat-trapping gases have helped intensify both the Southwest’s current drought and heavy downpours, which have been increasing at a rate three times that of average precipitation over the past century.
The researchers, from both the federal and private sectors, reached more tentative conclusions about the connection between greenhouse-gas emissions and hurricanes.
