A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming , January 13th 2022
An article from The European Physical Journal Plus by Gianluca Alimonti, Luigi Mariani, Franco Prodi & Renato Angelo Ricci, on January 13th 2022, Open Access.
“This article reviews recent bibliography on time series of some extreme weather events and related response indicators in order to understand whether an increase in intensity and/or frequency is detectable. … global trends in heatwave intensity are not significant. Daily precipitation intensity and extreme precipitation frequency are stationary … tropical cyclones show a substantial temporal invariance and the same is true for tornadoes in the USA. … impact of warming on surface wind speed remains unclear. The analysis is then extended to some global response indicators of extreme meteorological events, namely natural disasters, floods, droughts, ecosystem productivity and yields of the four main crops (maize, rice, soybean and wheat). None of these response indicators show a clear positive trend of extreme events. In conclusion on the basis of observational data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet. It would be nevertheless extremely important to define mitigation and adaptation strategies that take into account current trends.”