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Is climate change causing extreme weather? Experts disagree
Audio: Colorado Matters host Ryan Warner discusses climate change and extreme weather events with CIRES’ Roger Pielke Jr. and NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth
After big weather events, the question that often comes up is: “Is climate change responsible for this?” That question has popped up a lot in Colorado recently given massive floods and fires over the past year.
In September 2013, devastating floods hit the Front Range and, less than a year ago, the Black Forest wildfire wiped out more than 500 homes near Colorado Springs.
Colorado hasn’t been alone in its extreme weather misery: Hurricane Sandy ravaged the East Coast in 2012, blizzards and snowstorms tortured the Northeast in 2013 and the current severe drought in California means ski resorts haven’t opened and ranchers are selling off their herds.
Are all these events just Mother Nature cycling through her natural mood swings? Or is it, as some scientists suggest, that the human influence on our climate is causing these weather catastrophes?
Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and environmental scientist Roger Pielke Jr., director of the Center for Science and Technology in Boulder, disagree on the answer.
Trenberth shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize that went to the scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—the report that provides an internationally accepted authority on climate change and its impacts. He also co-authored an opinion piece proposing that climate change caused Hurricane Sandy.
Pielke, recently testified to the U.S. House Science Committee on Environment and argued that little evidence exists in the most recent IPCC report linking climate change to extreme weather events.
In starting the debate, the two scientists did agree on one fact: Climate change did not drive the Boulder flooding. Read more …
