An Indian origin scientist at the US Department of Energy’s Oak National Laboratory has developed a new methodology to determine to what extent there is a connection between human activity and climate change.
The model allows climatologists to relate extremes of a space and time variable like a 100-year rainfall at two locations or two time periods as well as extremes of two or more variables such as 100-year precipitation extremes and heat waves.Traditional climate models, on the other hand, are not especially useful for predicting extremes, particularly, rainfall extremes.
According to Dr. Auroop R Ganguly, who developed the model along with his colleagues, their statistical approach, outlined in the journal Advances in Water Resources, is a big step in the direction of modelling rainfall extremes from observations and climate model simulations.
"If for example, 100-year events at two locations occur simultaneously, and if our measure says they are completely independent, then their simultaneous occurrence becomes a 100 times 100 -- or 10,000-year event -- and therefore can be used to predict change more confidently,” said Dr. Ganguly, a B. Tech in Civil and Environmental Engineering from IIT Kharagpur.
“If, however, our method says the events at the two locations are completely dependent, then the simultaneous occurrence remains a 100-year event overall,” he said.
"Once we understand the nature of these connections our hope is that we will be able to determine if there is a relation between two extreme weather events - like heat waves and droughts.
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He believes the methodology will have widespread use.
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Source-ANI
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