We need to treat extreme events as connected, not as anomalies

By Avantika Goswami

Clear trends of interconnected extreme weather events intensifying and becoming more frequent can be seen across the world as the climate crisis unfolds

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Climate change amplifies cyclonic storms that typically form in the northern Indian Ocean. Increasing sea surface temperatures can make cyclones more powerful. The Bay of Bengal was about one degree warmer than normal in early May, creating conditions ripe for an unexpected increase in the strength of the cyclone. Amphan was not an isolated event.

Clear trends of interconnected extreme weather events intensifying and becoming more frequent can be seen across the world as the climate crisis unfolds. These events include the wildfires in United States’ California, Hurricane Laura in the US’ Gulf Coast, heat waves in multiple regions around the world and locust swarms in East Africa and India.

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Scientists have consequently started studying climate risks and extreme events in relation to one another, to not only improve climatological forecasts and analyses, but to also better inform disaster preparedness and response.

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A paper titled Understanding and managing connected extreme events, published in the journal Nature Climate Change in June 2020, goes a step further and introduces the concept of connected extreme events. When consecutive storms devastate infrastructure and lead to loss of homes and livelihoods, or an early spring and a hot and dry summer cause agricultural losses leading to a strain on government budgets, the combination of extreme events can be termed as connected.