The United Arab Emirates (UAE) will experience more frequent extreme weather events in the future.
Dr. Diana Francis, Senior Research Scientist and Head of the Environmental and Geophysical Sciences (ENGEOS) Lab at Khalifa University said due to global warming, the country will have increased rainfall in the spring, as well as hotter and longer summers.
Khaleej Times Monday reported these severe weather events are due to shifts in the atmospheric pattern.
She said, “Extreme events are expected to increase in frequency annually. This means that in the coming decades, these events will be happening more frequently than we used to see in the past."
She also noted that the rain that lashed the country on April 16 was caused by global warming.
"There has been indication in the recent reports of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that extreme weather events like heat waves or rainfall are going to be ‘more frequent’ and ‘more intense’ due to the increase in global temperature. This varies according to the region. It could be a heatwave in Asia for instance, or intense rainfall that we witnessed in the UAE,” she added.
Dr. Francis recently published her paper titled 'Recent and projected changes in climate patterns in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region', and highlighted that experts like herself have been continuously looking into the changes in temperature, winds, as well as the seasons.
