Science Source

The global climate 2011-2015: hot and wild

Analyzes the global climate 2011-2015 – the hottest five-year period on record - and the increasingly visible human footprint on extreme weather and climate events with dangerous and costly impacts
Finds the record temperatures were accompanied by rising sea levels and declines in Arctic sea-ice extent, continental glaciers and northern hemisphere snow cover
Finds that all these climate change indicators confirmed the long-term warming trend caused by greenhouse gases
States carbon dioxide reached the significant milestone of 400 parts per million in the atmosphere for the first time in 2015
Examines whether human-induced climate change was directly linked to individual extreme events
Finds that of 79 studies published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society between 2011 and 2014, more than half found that human-induced climate change contributed to the extreme event in question; finds that some studies found that the probability of extreme heat increased by 10 times or more
Highlights some of the high-impact events, including:
- the East African drought in 2010-2012 which caused an estimated 258,000 excess deaths and the 2013-2015 southern African drought;
- flooding in South-East Asia in 2011 which killed 800 people and caused more than US$40 billion in economic losses;
- 2015 heatwaves in India and Pakistan in 2015, which claimed more than 4,100 lives;
- Hurricane Sandy in 2012 which caused US$67 billion in economic losses in the United States of America;
- and Typhoon Haiyan which killed 7,800 people in the Philippines in 2013