From the ‘Computer Models Get Me Stimulated’ Dept:
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday that man-made climate change greatly increased the chances of last month’s devastating floods in Louisiana.
“We found human-caused, heat-trapping greenhouse gases can play a measurable role in events such as the August rains that resulted in such devastating floods, affecting so many people,” said Karin van der Wiel, a research associate with the agency and the lead author of the findings.
Van der Wiel conducted a rapid assessment report to determine the influence of man-made climate change from the burning of fossil fuels on the strength of last month’s rains that caused the floods in Baton Rouge, destroying 40,000 homes and resulting in several deaths.
The report found that “human-caused climate warming” increased the chances of the “torrential rains” by at least 40 percent.
“While we concluded that 40 percent is the minimum increase in the chances of such rains, we found that the most likely impact of climate change is a near doubling of the odds of such a storm,” she said.
NOAA partnered with scientists from World Weather Attribution, a campaign started by Oxford University and other academic institution to calculate the link between climate change and extreme weather events. Linking weather events to rising temperatures due to increased levels of greenhouse gas emissions has been controversial and difficult.
The agency said it used statistical analysis of rainfall observations combined with two of its high-resolution climate models to determine how the odds of such rainfall have changed over the last century.
