Scientists say climate change goosed New Zealand storm fury
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Loading... - Grinde Lucas
- 06 Apr 2023
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Climate change worsened flooding from a tropical cyclone that shut down much of New Zealand last month in one of the country’s costliest disasters, scientists said, but they couldn’t quite calculate how much it magnified the catastrophe.
A flash study Tuesday by 23 scientists from around the globe found that global warming from the burning of fossil fuels added to the downpours from Cyclone Gabrielle that included at least six hours of deluges of nearly an inch per hour (20 millimeters per hour) of driving rain. But normal methods to quantify how much climate change added to the disaster weren’t conclusive enough for scientists because weather records there don’t go back very far, the area affected was relatively small and the region is subject to naturally high weather variability.
Climate change is a serious concern for flooding in New Zealand and you’ve got to understand these are gigantic amounts of rainfall,” said Sam Dean, a co-author and scientist at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research. “I have no doubt whatsoever in my mind with my experience of my life as a climate scientist that climate change has influenced the event but do we know it’s exactly 30%? No, we don’t.” Read More…
