Angry weather Heat waves, floods, storms, and the new science of climate change

Six years ago, an oceanographer and two climate scientists, including the author, formed World Weather Attribution, an audacious research group that computer-models extreme weather events in real time to determine, within days, the impact of climate change upon them. Among the events they've reported on: Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the European heat wave of 2015, and the 2015 Storm Desmond, which hit the north of Britain. Juxtaposing such models with a pre-Industrial Age weather model drawn from centuries-old sailors' logs, among other records, not only could they answer climate-change deniers with hard evidence, they could also determine when climate change had no effect whatsoever, pinpointing instead other underlying causes. Along with explaining her team's methodologies, author Otto offers a good overview of the climate-change issue itself, laying out the evolution of climate change in the industrial era, the politics over the issue, and the responsibilities of the industrialized world--in particular, corporations and governments--to help repair the damage. The result is a most timely book delivering two precious commodities in this annus horribilis: hope and understanding.

Because of human actions, the climate is changing--and not for the better. So argues Otto, whose work is at the forefront of climate science. Whatever else we might know, or think we know, about the climate, "every weather event takes place under different environmental conditions than those of 250 years ago," writes Otto, director of Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute. Unpacking that, the 250-year cutoff roughly coincides with King George III's awarding of a patent to James Watt for the steam engine, which would soon give birth to the Industrial Revolution--and with it the greenhouse gases that are steadily warming the atmosphere. Commanding a vast body of data, Otto observes that the "seven hottest years [in recorded history] have all taken place within the last decade." Because we are in the middle of this change, we suffer from observational bias: We know it's hot, but we keep at our normal affairs. Meanwhile, this rising heat has different effects in different places. More heat means more atmospheric moisture but also quicker evaporation, so that some places will be flooded and others will suffer from drought. The big-picture effects are predictable, writes the author, but we must look beyond those "large-scale averages" to consider the effects of climate change on a storm-by-storm, drought-by-drought basis. Throughout the narrative, Otto intersperses glimpses of that big picture with a major case study: Hurricane Harvey, which in 2017 did nearly as much damage as Hurricane Katrina a dozen years earlier, dropping 41 inches of rain in just three days. Along the way, the author considers the concurrent effects of leaders of government and industry who have stymied research. She has an answer: "If governments don't do their job and don't do enough to put a stop to climate change, then courts can remind them of their purpose." Those who doubt the severity of climate change will persist, but for the fact-minded, Otto's arguments are incontrovertible. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.