Scientists Just Linked Another Record-Breaking Weather Event to Climate Change
September 13, 2017
Last year, a remarkable April heat wave shattered all-time temperature records across Southeast Asia, prompting public health concerns, killing at least one elephant and making international headlines. Now, scientists believe the event was driven by the combined influence of a strong El Niño event and human-caused climate change. And they say events like it will only become more common in the future.
A new study, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, finds that the 2016 April extreme can be attributed about 49 percent to the influence of a severe El Niño event, which began in 2015 and lingered into the following year, with global warming accounting for another 29 percent, and the rest attributed to unknown factors. But the researchers note that the impact of global warming is catching up and may become stronger than that of El Niño in the future.
The Washington Post, June 6, 2017
The National Science Foundation, June 6, 2017
The Weather Channel, June 7, 2017
South China Morning Post, June 7, 2017
Featuring: Kaustubh Thhirumalai, Ph.D. student, Jackson School of Geosciences
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FRIDAY: Oceans soak up a vast amount of greenhouse heat. At this week's #UTIGSeminars, Wenbo Wu @WHOI introduces a novel way to track the oceans' potential to absorb heat using seismic waves generated by rumbles in the Earth!
Starts 10:30am CT. Abstract:
https://ig.utexas.edu/utig-seminar-series/2025/utig-seminar-series-wenbo-wu-whoi/
In California, a record-wet winter helped alleviate a longstanding drought above the ground. But deeper recovery isn’t so simple, according to recent research by the Jackson School’s @ShujuanM.
Read more: https://www.jsg.utexas.edu/news/2025/02/new-method-for-measuring-groundwater-shows-californias-aquifers-remain-depleted/
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UTIG's Krista Soderlund was in Austin, Texas, to receive the award.
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