New Research published in the Journal of Climate sheds new light on the long-standing question of how much of the observed changes in Earth’s temperature are due to natural ocean cycles. The short answer is, very little.
Devastating seasonal rains in Kenya have been reported to have displaced nearly 300,000 people and killed 158. Other countries in the region such as Rwanda and Somalia have also been seriously affected.
Twenty years ago, the trend in annual mean global mean temperature became detectable. Ten years ago, robust regional seasonal mean temperature trends similarly started to emerge. Nowadays, we can see trends even in weather extremes.
WWA partner and deputy director of the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute (ECI) Friederike Otto is the lead author of a new study published in Nature Climate Change.
With colleagues at the University of Reading, we performed a simple analysis to assess what factors played a role in this record heat, specifically the roles of greenhouse gas emissions associated with global warming, the natural climate oscillation known as El Niño, as well as solar activity and volcanic aerosols.