CLAIM: Climate, weather or meteorological events that we would classify as “extreme” have declined in severity over the last 20 or 30 years.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Scientific research has documented how events including extreme precipitation, droughts and forest fires have become more frequent and severe as a result of climate change. While the impacts of climate change vary across the globe, scientists agree that overall, human-caused warming is supercharging these extreme events.
THE FACTS: A podcast clip shared on Instagram this week falsely claims that extreme climate, weather and meteorological events “are actually declining in severity.”
“We could look at accumulated cyclonic energy — typhoons in the Pacific, hurricanes in the Atlantic — and it’s actually declined over the last 20 or 30 years,” the speaker says in the video, which amassed thousands of likes. “We could look at forest fires, they’ve declined. We could look at droughts. By any measure that we care to look at, we can see that actually things have kind of calmed down a bit.”
But scientists who study climate patterns say these kinds of extremes are aggravated by climate change — and are becoming more severe, not less.
“Heat extremes are getting more frequent, more severe; precipitation extremes are getting more frequent, more severe,” said Kai Kornhuber, a lecturer and research scientist at Columbia University. “Fire weather, which is linked to wildfires, is getting more frequent, more severe, more areas...
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