Odds are high that many parts of the world will see more frequent heavy precipitation events, along with more frequent and intense heat waves, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which this week released comprehensive report linking global warming with extreme weather events. According to the report, existing evidence shows that climate change has led to changes in climate extremes such as heat waves, record high temperatures and, in many regions, heavy precipitation in the past half century. The IPCC report also forecasts increases in the average maximum wind speed of tropical cyclones (also known as typhoons or hurricanes) during the coming century, although possibly not in every ocean basin.  However it is also likely that overall there will be either a decrease or essentially no change in the number of tropical cyclones. Droughts could intensify in southern Europe and the Mediterranean region, central Europe, central North America, Central America and Mexico, northeast Brazil, and southern Africa, but the experts say they only have “medium” confidence in that outlook, based on definitional issues regarding how to classify and measure a drought, a lack of observational data, and the inability of models to include all the factors that influence droughts. “The main message from the report is that we know enough to make good decisions about managing the risks of climate-related disasters.

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