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Tenfold Increase in Climate Extremes
by Angela Shiflet
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a. Wildfire. Copyright © by Salam2009 at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wildfire_From_The_Air.jpg
b. Flood in Granada, Spain, February, 2026. Copyright © by A. Shiflet
Is it just our imagination, or do there seem to be more heat waves, wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, and flooding and are these more severe than just a few years ago? No! It is not our imagination! The number and extent of such climate-change extremes is real.
Scientists have long sought ways to quantify climate extreme events, such as with metrics involving frequency, duration, intensity, and geographic area. This information could be used to assess the seriousness and attribution of the problem. A team, led by Gottfried Kirchengast at the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change, University of Graz in Austria, have formulated a new class of climate hazard metrics and applied their research to various geographic areas across Europe (Kirchengast 2026). Disturbingly, their research indicates about a tenfold (5 to 25) amplification in each of various climate extremes from the reference period 1961–1990 to the recent period 2010–2024. Moreover, such amplification was demonstrated across all considered geographical regions, such as Austria and Europe.
This degree of amplification dramatically exceeds what could occur naturally. As the authors demonstrate and state, comparisons using their metrics provide “unequivocal evidence of anthropogenic climate change.” The extent and number of such climate extremes originate from human activity. We are the ones responsible!
Kirchengast, Gottfried, Stephanie J. Haas, Jürgen Fuchsberger. 2026. “A new class of climate hazard metrics and its demonstration: revealing a ten-fold increase of extreme heat over Europe,” Weather and Climate Extremes, 51 (2026) 100855. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221209472600006X?via%3Dihub