Computer science breakthroughs aid understanding of extremes

Developments in computer science have helped scientists to better understand the link between climate change and last year’s extreme weather.

In 2023, the world reached new record temperatures, with an unprecedented global mean temperature of 1.48°C above pre-industrial times. Each month from June onward was warmer than the corresponding month in any previous year. In this last half year temperatures exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial (1850-1900) with some days even exceeding 2.0°C.

These record temperatures strongly increased the intensity of heatwaves, droughts and extreme rainfall associated with storms like Otis and Daniel.

That is the finding of a consortium of leading European climate institutes highlighting key findings on extremes in 2023 as part of the XAIDA consortium, which stands for ‘eXtreme events: Artificial Intelligence for Detection and Attribution.’ The consortium unites 16 leading institutes within Europe working on extreme weather attribution using machine learning.

Professor Ted Shepherd, Grantham Professor of Climate Science at the University of Reading, who studies cold extremes and their impact on the energy sector within XAIDA, said: “New technologies in computer science are helping us better understand climate change. Computers can now analyse massive amounts of data about weather and climate patterns, which lets scientists see links they could not see before. Artificial intelligence can find subtle patterns in data that humans would miss, and there is a greater demand than ever for people who can understand and interpret these data. That is why we have recently launched an MSc course in Climate Change and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Reading, the only one of its kind in the UK.

“Machine learning has given scientists new insights into how climate change works and what impacts it is having. For example, we are using it to find out more about what rising temperatures mean for extreme cold weather.

“Although cold extremes are generally becoming less severe, and winter 2023 was not particularly cold in Europe, as the current cold spell in Scandinavia reminds us, very cold winters are still quite possible and could cause severe energy shortages.”

XAIDA is set to host a press conference on Tuesday, 9 January at 1200 GMT highlighting their key findings on extreme weather in 2023. Watch the press conference.