Extreme events ‘presage worse to come’ in a warming climate

From Yale Climate Connections.

Increased fatalities, pain, and costs provide a compelling case for taking action on climate change, three experts warn. 

 “Mark Twain said a century ago that “fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t”. Today we might just say, “You can’t make this stuff up”. However stated, the sentiment is painfully appropriate when it comes to extreme climate events. They are important not only for the damages they are inflicting here and now, but also for what they bode for the future. Many of the events we are currently experiencing would have been unimaginable in the latter half of the 20th century. 

“We would not have to turn the clock back very far to a time when few would have believed that a record-shattering heatwave in the western U.S. could raise Los Angeles temperatures above 120°F, or that areas of Siberia could experience temperatures of over 100°F.