The Economist quotes new results from James Hansen, a scientist who has studied climate change for years. The graph above shows how the distribution of temperatures over the land surface of the earth has changed over recent decades. Defining "extreme heat" as above the three sigma level of the nomial distribution from the historical past ("the normal distribution"), you can see that there are many more extreme events in recent years. The situation is going to get worse as global warming continues, and if we don't cut back on the emission of greenhouse gasses, by the end of the 21st century, there will be many more extreme events.
No comments:
Post a Comment