Climate Change Is ‘Loading the Weather Dice Against Us’
Rising temperatures are causing “knock-on effects that we’re only just beginning to understand,” climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe says on this week’s Zero.
Florida declared a state of emergency after downpours flooded Miami streets, soaked Fort Lauderdale with its rainiest June day ever, grounded hundreds of flights, and forced officials to issue rare emergency flood warnings.
Photographer: Eva Marie Uzcategui/BloombergThis year is shaping up to be the warmest on record, and extreme weather is already wreaking havoc around the world. There’s been flooding in the United Arab Emirates and Brazil, hail and record rainfall across the US, and extreme heat in India and Egypt.
While rising temperatures aren’t behind every hailstorm or hurricane, their overall impact is increasingly clear: Climate change is “loading the weather dice against us,” says Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist and professor at Texas Tech University, on this week’s Zero podcast. “We all have a pair of weather dice and we have a chance of rolling a double six — a heat wave, a storm, a flood, a wildfire or more — at any given time,” Hayhoe says. “As the climate changes, as the ocean and the atmosphere are heating up, it’s supercharging our climate system, essentially adding more sixes and even nowadays some sevens and even an eight to our dice events.”