“Canadians prove that humans are causing climate change”
The Globe and Mail newspaper has published a brief summary of research by Environment Canada.
Humans are directly affecting global rainfall patterns and have been doing so for most of a century, according to a new study that gives the first solid proof that people are causing critical climate change.Researchers from Environment Canada say their analysis of global data shows rainfall has effectively shifted away from the region immediately north of the equator — including sub-Saharan Africa, southern India and south east Asia — and moved north to Canada and Europe, and south to the tropics below the equator.
And the main cause behind the global change is human activity, say lead authors Xuebin Zhang and Francis Zwiers, from Environment Canada.
“It’s the first time that we’ve detected in precipitation data a clear imprint of human influence on the climate system,” Mr. Zwiers told The Globe and Mail.
“Temperature changes we can cope with. But water changes are much more difficult to cope with. That will have economic impacts, and impacts on food production, and could ultimately displace populations.”
The scientists gathered global rainfall data from 1925 to 1999, and then compared it to 14 complex computer climate models.
The rainfall data confirmed what the scientists had speculated could occur thanks to human activity, and in some cases the weather changes went beyond what scientists had predicted.
