New Calculation Method Unveils Severity Of Climate Change
February 03, 2022
For the longest time, surface air temperature was the only data used to measure climate change. However, a new study is recommending to use humidity and energy contained within the atmosphere to measure and understand climate change as surface temperature can affect both of these data.
The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal by researchers in the US and China. The research spells out how we should integrate humidity and atmospheric energy into the metric to fully understand the severity of climate change. According to the study, humidity and atmospheric energy increases even faster as surface temperature increases. The increase in surface temperature allows more water to evaporate and warmer air holds more water vapor. Thus, the humidity increases further and it is a vicious cycle from there on.
The study points out that although the unchecked emissions might bring up the global temperature by 4.8 degrees Celsius by the turn of the century, the new integrated method of calculation reveals that global temperature might soar up to 12 degrees Celsius by 2100. The extreme precipitation events might increase up to 60% and there could be a 40% rise in the energy to fuel tropical thunderstorms. Concurrently, extreme heat events could increase in the frequency by 14 to 30 times ,with the combination of high heat and humidity.
The study reveals that extreme heat events are now being observed in parts of India, the Persian Gulf, North America and Europe. The disadvantaged groups with little to no access to air conditioning will suffer the most, according to the study.
V. Ramanathan, co-author of the study, from Scripps Institution of Oceanography said"It is the humidity increase accompanied by warming which makes climate changes into a climate crisis worldwide.”
The study’s lead author, Ghuang Zhang from the Ocean University of China said that as the climate warms, the humidity increases exponentially.
A climate scientist, Andrew Dessler, from Texas A&M University who was not involved in the study expresses that the new research makes sense albeit not surprising as we have already known the correlation between humidity and surface temperature. He also said discontentedly that as the evidence is clear and mounting that we need to curb emissions, it will probably not change an individual’s mind if they are not already convinced by now.