2. The challenge of Argentina

When WWA first started, it could only analyze a few incidents per year. Now, they discuss disaster events in online meetings almost every week. With limited resources, they must prioritize which incidents are most worthy of investigation. Many of the scientists in the group are volunteers who take the initiative to find time to participate in WWA activities outside of their regular jobs such as teaching and research.

To determine which disaster events are worth investing in, WWA has developed evaluation criteria for different types of extreme weather events to assess the possible humanitarian consequences of each event. For heat waves, for example, it takes into account deaths associated with them, whether the affected area is densely populated, and whether the area is too vulnerable. WWA tends to study events that cause harm to more people, but is also trying to cover more diverse areas. "We don't want to study what's happening just because we happen to work in the global North." Sara Tring-Qiu, a climatologist at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute. Otto agrees that pushing the boundaries of science is also an important factor in WWA's calculations. In fact, the WWA decided not to study the extreme Arctic cold snap that affected millions of people in the United States during the Christmas and New Year holidays in 2022 precisely because they had previously studied similar North American cold snaps and did not believe the event would yield new findings.

The South American heat wave caught the team's attention because it met several of the WWA's criteria for heat waves worthy of concern: record-breaking temperatures at the start of the summer and the vulnerability of the affected areas. At the end of November 2022, scientists held their first video conference to discuss these heat waves.

"The Argentine heat wave is rapidly expanding northward." Says Maza Falberg of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Climate Center. "Is this related to La Nina?" Otto asked. La Nina refers to an abnormal air and sea circulation in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, which can increase the probability of heat waves in the Argentine region. After a fast-paced conversation, the team decided to contact scientists in South America for further information and quickly scheduled another meeting for early December. Twelve minutes later, the call ended, and everyone quickly logged off.

Where possible, the WWA works with local experts, expecting them to tell us which datasets will give the most comprehensive picture of the region, or how best to gather meteorological information about the region. At the meeting in early December, Juan Antonio Rivera, a climatologist at Argentina's Institute of Snow, Glacier and Environmental Sciences, joined the online session from his office in Mendoza. Recent droughts have affected northern Argentina, southern Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, but most of these regions lack dense networks of meteorological observations, he said. One of the first tasks, therefore, is to see what data are available to analyze changes in drought conditions over time. He can help WWA teams tap into information that is difficult for European scholars to find, or not available due to language barriers.

In this video conference, you can see a Dutch scientist in a sweater and a Chilean scientist sweating on a hot day debating how to quantify the impact of a heat wave on a drought. "Every time you have a heat wave, the drought gets worse." "Said Ana Selensohn, a researcher at the French-Argentine Institute for Climate and Impacts Research in Buenos Aires. She said rivers were too low, disrupting vital agricultural export routes and making it difficult for hydropower stations to generate electricity. She was even contacted by a transport organisation asking how to design a boat for a low-water river.

The WWA team must efficiently assess every extreme weather event. Otto later told me that for every attribution study, they needed to find ways to quantify it. For heat waves, the team often defined them by temperature records that exceeded a certain threshold over a period of time. Drought is more complex because it can be defined in many ways, such as a lack of rainfall, reduced soil moisture, or a drop in surface water levels. And each definition may correspond to multiple variables. "If the temperature is very high, evaporation is rapid, and that can lead to lower river flows, which can have a huge impact on the economy - you can't capture those effects just by looking at rainfall," Otto said.

Otto asked if the team could quickly make a reasonable analysis based on temperature and precipitation alone. The panellists discussed various options: Studying heat waves is relatively simple, because so many studies have linked heat waves to climate change. But some WWA members have advocated for a broader, but slower, analysis of the drought. Finally, one member asked, "Is there an option to do both?"

Rivera impressed the panelists by detailing how his home country was experiencing staggering heat. "This November was the hottest on record in Argentina," he said. The team members were so enthusiastic that they decided to finish the heat wave study as quickly as possible and allow enough time to move forward with the more complex drought study. "This is something we've never done before - one study, but published in two parts." "Otto said. They also assigned specific tasks, after which everyone quickly ended the online video conference and returned to their real lives.

Over the next few weeks, the scientists used five different numerical models to compare climate conditions today with those before the Industrial Revolution. They focused on the hottest week in early December and found that climate change increased the probability of this heat wave by 60 times. Temperatures in Argentina have risen by about 1.4 ° C. It has been shown that this change may increase the risk of heat-related death by 5.7%. The WWA published these results in late December 2022, shortly before another heat wave swept through Argentina. "Remarkably, these record high temperature events occurred even before the official start of the Southern Hemisphere summer." This is not normal." "The group said.

When the team turned to drought, there was a massive power outage in Buenos Aires. Forest fires are also burning in northern Argentina and neighboring areas of Chile. "The reason any weather event becomes a disaster is nothing more than the vulnerability and exposure of society itself." "Otto said. Heat records alone don't tell the full story of how people are affected, and "you can't understand what climate change really means" if you don't put science and disaster response together. In Latin America, for example, there are high levels of social inequality in many regions that can make marginalized communities more vulnerable to extreme weather. It reminded Rivera of a time when desperate farmers knelt in the parched fields to pray for rain.

While Argentina's climate woes hardly capture the attention of countries north of the equator, the impact is felt globally. Argentina is a major wheat exporter, and a trade group estimates that half of its crop will fail in 2023 due to drought, at a cost of $10 billion. Analysts have warned that crop failures in the country will further push up global food prices.

WWA stands out in the world of climate research primarily for its willingness to confront the wide range of societal issues raised by extreme weather events. Otto points to a 2022 WWA study in sub-Saharan Africa that wasn't even largely weather-related. The region's economy depends on rain-fed crops and livestock. However, due to the delay of the 2021 rainy season, the local food security has been a series of problems. "Even small changes in rainfall," the WWA argues, "can affect already stretched food supplies." Due to large uncertainties in the data itself, the team is not yet able to determine whether changes in rainfall have been affected by climate change, but the WWA warns that the region is "highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change on global food security."

2. The challenge of Argentina

When WWA first started, it could only analyze a few incidents per year. Now, they discuss disaster events in online meetings almost every week. With limited resources, they must prioritize which incidents are most worthy of investigation. Many of the scientists in the group are volunteers who take the initiative to find time to participate in WWA activities outside of their regular jobs such as teaching and research.

To determine which disaster events are worth investing in, WWA has developed evaluation criteria for different types of extreme weather events to assess the possible humanitarian consequences of each event. For heat waves, for example, it takes into account deaths associated with them, whether the affected area is densely populated, and whether the area is too vulnerable. WWA tends to study events that cause harm to more people, but is also trying to cover more diverse areas. "We don't want to study what's happening just because we happen to work in the global North." Sara Tring-Qiu, a climatologist at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute. Otto agrees that pushing the boundaries of science is also an important factor in WWA's calculations. In fact, the WWA decided not to study the extreme Arctic cold snap that affected millions of people in the United States during the Christmas and New Year holidays in 2022 precisely because they had previously studied similar North American cold snaps and did not believe the event would yield new findings.

The South American heat wave caught the team's attention because it met several of the WWA's criteria for heat waves worthy of concern: record-breaking temperatures at the start of the summer and the vulnerability of the affected areas. At the end of November 2022, scientists held their first video conference to discuss these heat waves.

"The Argentine heat wave is rapidly expanding northward." Says Maza Falberg of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Climate Center. "Is this related to La Nina?" Otto asked. La Nina refers to an abnormal air and sea circulation in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, which can increase the probability of heat waves in the Argentine region. After a fast-paced conversation, the team decided to contact scientists in South America for further information and quickly scheduled another meeting for early December. Twelve minutes later, the call ended, and everyone quickly logged off.

Where possible, the WWA works with local experts, expecting them to tell us which datasets will give the most comprehensive picture of the region, or how best to gather meteorological information about the region. At the meeting in early December, Juan Antonio Rivera, a climatologist at Argentina's Institute of Snow, Glacier and Environmental Sciences, joined the online session from his office in Mendoza. Recent droughts have affected northern Argentina, southern Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, but most of these regions lack dense networks of meteorological observations, he said. One of the first tasks, therefore, is to see what data are available to analyze changes in drought conditions over time. He can help WWA teams tap into information that is difficult for European scholars to find, or not available due to language barriers.

In this video conference, you can see a Dutch scientist in a sweater and a Chilean scientist sweating on a hot day debating how to quantify the impact of a heat wave on a drought. "Every time you have a heat wave, the drought gets worse." "Said Ana Selensohn, a researcher at the French-Argentine Institute for Climate and Impacts Research in Buenos Aires. She said rivers were too low, disrupting vital agricultural export routes and making it difficult for hydropower stations to generate electricity. She was even contacted by a transport organisation asking how to design a boat for a low-water river.

The WWA team must efficiently assess every extreme weather event. Otto later told me that for every attribution study, they needed to find ways to quantify it. For heat waves, the team often defined them by temperature records that exceeded a certain threshold over a period of time. Drought is more complex because it can be defined in many ways, such as a lack of rainfall, reduced soil moisture, or a drop in surface water levels. And each definition may correspond to multiple variables. "If the temperature is very high, evaporation is rapid, and that can lead to lower river flows, which can have a huge impact on the economy - you can't capture those effects just by looking at rainfall," Otto said.

Otto asked if the team could quickly make a reasonable analysis based on temperature and precipitation alone. The panellists discussed various options: Studying heat waves is relatively simple, because so many studies have linked heat waves to climate change. But some WWA members have advocated for a broader, but slower, analysis of the drought. Finally, one member asked, "Is there an option to do both?"

Rivera impressed the panelists by detailing how his home country was experiencing staggering heat. "This November was the hottest on record in Argentina," he said. The team members were so enthusiastic that they decided to finish the heat wave study as quickly as possible and allow enough time to move forward with the more complex drought study. "This is something we've never done before - one study, but published in two parts." "Otto said. They also assigned specific tasks, after which everyone quickly ended the online video conference and returned to their real lives.

Over the next few weeks, the scientists used five different numerical models to compare climate conditions today with those before the Industrial Revolution. They focused on the hottest week in early December and found that climate change increased the probability of this heat wave by 60 times. Temperatures in Argentina have risen by about 1.4 ° C. It has been shown that this change may increase the risk of heat-related death by 5.7%. The WWA published these results in late December 2022, shortly before another heat wave swept through Argentina. "Remarkably, these record high temperature events occurred even before the official start of the Southern Hemisphere summer." This is not normal." "The group said.

When the team turned to drought, there was a massive power outage in Buenos Aires. Forest fires are also burning in northern Argentina and neighboring areas of Chile. "The reason any weather event becomes a disaster is nothing more than the vulnerability and exposure of society itself." "Otto said. Heat records alone don't tell the full story of how people are affected, and "you can't understand what climate change really means" if you don't put science and disaster response together. In Latin America, for example, there are high levels of social inequality in many regions that can make marginalized communities more vulnerable to extreme weather. It reminded Rivera of a time when desperate farmers knelt in the parched fields to pray for rain.

While Argentina's climate woes hardly capture the attention of countries north of the equator, the impact is felt globally. Argentina is a major wheat exporter, and a trade group estimates that half of its crop will fail in 2023 due to drought, at a cost of $10 billion. Analysts have warned that crop failures in the country will further push up global food prices.

WWA stands out in the world of climate research primarily for its willingness to confront the wide range of societal issues raised by extreme weather events. Otto points to a 2022 WWA study in sub-Saharan Africa that wasn't even largely weather-related. The region's economy depends on rain-fed crops and livestock. However, due to the delay of the 2021 rainy season, the local food security has been a series of problems. "Even small changes in rainfall," the WWA argues, "can affect already stretched food supplies." Due to large uncertainties in the data itself, the team is not yet able to determine whether changes in rainfall have been affected by climate change, but the WWA warns that the region is "highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change on global food security."