Angry Weather: Heat Waves, Floods, Storms, and the New Science of Climate Change

by Friederike Otto, Sarah Pybus (Translator)

Overview

From leading climate scientist Dr. Friederike Otto, this gripping book reveals the revolutionary science that definitively links extreme weather events—including deadly heat waves, forest fires, floods, and hurricanes—to climate change.

“Meet the forensic scientists of climate change; if you like CSI, you’ll be equally enthralled with the skill and speed these folks exhibit. But the stakes are infinitely higher!” —Bill McKibben, author of Falter and The End of Nature

Tied with Hurricane Katrina as the costliest cyclone on record, Hurricane Harvey caused catastrophic flooding and over a hundred deaths in 2017. Angry Weather tells the compelling, day-by-day story of the World Weather Attribution unit—a team of scientists that studies extreme weather events while they’re happening—and their race to track the connection between the hurricane and climate change. As the hurricane unfolds, Otto reveals how attribution science works in real time, and determines that Harvey’s terrifying floods were three times more likely to occur due to human-induced climate change.

At the forefront of cutting-edge climate science, Friederike Otto uncovers how the new ability to determine climate change’s role in extreme weather events can dramatically transform how we view the climate crisis: from how it will affect those of us who are most vulnerable, to the corporations and governments that may find themselves held accountable in the courts. The research laid out in Angry Weather will have profound impacts, both today and for the future of humankind.

Published in Partnership with the David Suzuki Institute.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781778400742
Publisher:	Greystone Books
Publication date:	05/02/2023
Series:	World Weather Attribution
Pages:	264
Sales rank:	429,572
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Friederike (Fredi) Otto is a physicist, philosopher, climate researcher, senior lecturer at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London. Otto is also the co-founder and lead on the international project World Weather Attribution, which assesses the human influence on extreme weather and has been profiled in the New York Times, Nature, and other outlets. Otto was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People of 2021 and and as one of the top 10 people who helped shape science in 2021 by the journal Nature.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Prologue: The New Weather 1

1 A New Branch of Research: The Role of the Climate in Our Weather

1 Cause and Effect: How We Created Our Weather 19

2 Sowing the Seeds of Doubt: Climate Change Deniers 34

3 Revolution in Climate Science: Turning the Field on Its Head 53

4 The Human Factor: Calculating the Influence of Climate Change on the Weather 72

5 Heat Waves, Downpours, and More: The Role of Climate Change in the Weather 94

2 Consequences: The Power of Attribution Science

6 Ignore Climate Change and Suffer Its Wrath 115

7 Facts Not Fatalism: Identifying the Causes of Disasters in Order to Act 129

8 A Question of Justice: The Cost of Climate Change and the Responsibilities of Industrialized Countries 144

9 Countries and Corporations on Trial 161

10 Climate Change in Everyday Life: Seeing the Weather From a New Perspective 182

Epilogue 199

Acknowledgments 204

Editorial Note 206

Notes 207

Bibliography 216

Index 234

Editorial Reviews

"A good overview of the climate-change issue, 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."
—Booklist

"For the fact-minded, Otto's arguments are incontrovertible."
—Kirkus Reviews

"This elegant new branch of climate science [will] have profound implications for public policy and planning, and will lead to even more useful research in the future."
—Vancouver Sun

"Angry Weather is all about science, but it is not all technical. It is a readable book for those who have limited knowledge of weather and climate systems. Otto provides succinct scientific explanations throughout the book to ensure her main points are supported by science but still understandable and relevant to the main message."
—Alternatives Journal

"Attribution science—climate forensics, or reverse engineering—is a new discipline explained in this book with passion and verve by one of its creators. Fredi Otto is destined to be one of those rare scientists whose name becomes well known in the wider world."
—Mark Denny, author of Making Sense of Weather and Climate: The Science Behind the Forecasts

"Angry Weather introduces us to the forensic scientists of climate change; if you like to watch CSI, you'll be equally enthralled with the skill and speed these folks exhibit. But the stakes are infinitely higher!"
—Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

"[A] thrilling work of nonfiction... If readers were holding any doubt about climate's effects on weather before picking up this book, that doubt will be eviscerated before the last gripping page."
—Literary Hub

"This fascinating book takes us on a voyage across the cutting edge of climate science that irrevocably alters our perspective of the world in which we live and the future it holds. I wish I could make this book required reading for the world."
—Katharine Hayhoe, UN Champion of the Earth

From the Publisher

2020-06-26
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.

Kirkus Reviews