Climate change makes weather forecasting harder
Source: Middle East Insurance Review | Feb 2024
Climate change is making it increasingly difficult for scientists to forecast extreme weather accurately in the short term. Climate change also implies that the world will have to learn to live through more unpredictable weather.
Recently, the Australian meteorology department had to face criticism when it failed to provide timely warnings about the deadly storms that ravaged some parts of Australia in December 2023. The thunderstorms followed the landfall of ex-tropical cyclone Jasper in Queensland.
Australia agriculture minister Murray Watt told Australian Broadcasting Corporation, “Climate change is having an impact. The models that we’ve traditionally used are having to change because the climate is changing. That’s something that I know the bureau is working hard on, but unfortunately, the reality is that climate change means that we are going to be living through more unpredictable weather.”
Mr Watt, who is also emergency management minister, acknowledged the criticisms and said, “meteorology is not a perfect science.”
A study by Stanford University in 2021 had showed that the rising temperatures may intensify the unpredictability of weather in Earth’s midlatitudes. The limit of reliable temperature, wind and rainfall forecasts falls by about a day when the atmosphere warms by even a few degrees Celsius.
The Stanford study said climate change could be shifting the limits of weather predictability and pushing the reliable 10-day forecasts out of reach.
Stanford University atmospheric scientist and lead author of the study Aditi Seshadri said the results show the state of the climate in general has implications for how many days out you can say something that’s accurate about the weather. Cooler climates seem to be more predictable. M