Abstract
Global warming and climate change in the last decades cause the increased frequency of extreme weather events around the globe. In the last year, 2022, the world witnessed very high temperature records, extensive droughts that showed sinking of river and lake levels to historic lows and increasing rainfall that caused extensive flooding and devastating floods in many parts of the world. Long-term droughts set the stage for wildfires and worsened food insecurity. Also, droughts, or extended period of unusually dry weather, escalate the damage caused to plants, ecosystems, and wildlife. In the agricultural sector, sustained drought can result in complete crop failure and damage to livestock. Scientists have recorded extreme weather events in the last year 2022. The events eventually posed numerous questions, are all these extreme weather events exacerbated by human-caused climate change and global warming or are in line with projections of regional impacts. Global warming and Climate change are often cast as predictions made by complicated computer models. But the scientific basis for climate change is much broader, and models are actually only one part of it. For more than a century, scientists measured and studied the basic physics behind why greenhouse gases (GHGs), and carbon cause global warming of the Earth’s atmosphere. The greenhouse effect on Earth is very important for life and the presence of liquid water in the oceans, rivers and lakes under the warming influence of the Sun: Scientific studies showed that climate change and rising temperatures are affecting the frequency of extremes weather events in every region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as prolonged heat waves, heavy precipitation causing floods, droughts, and tropical cyclones or/and hurricanes, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence (global warming), has strengthened since the Fifth Assessment report of IPCC in 2014. Global data in the last years in all regions showed that extreme heat events have become more frequent and more intense across most land regions since the 1950s, according to the IPCC. In terms of the impact on society, heat waves are happening more regularly, are starting earlier and ending later. Temperatures over 40°C and even 50°C are becoming increasingly frequent in many parts of the world, posing a major threat to human health and well-being. This review focused on the extreme weather events in the last decade and especially for the years 2021 and 2022. The global results were devastating considering the damage to infrastructure and the loss of lives. In 2022 the world have faced several dramatic weather disasters which claimed far too many lives and livelihoods and undermined health, food, energy and water security.
http://chem-tox-ecotox.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/EXTREME-WEATHER-EVENTS-CLIMATE-2022.pdf