If you feel like blaming something for the sweltering temperatures at a ball game or cooler-than-normal nights, you might find reason with a new tool released Thursday that reveals the likelihood a weather event is caused by climate change.
The online tool from Climate Central, a nonprofit science and news organization, tells the influence of human-caused climate change on daily average temperatures in more than 1,000 cities worldwide. Those include Bangor, Lewiston, Presque Isle and Portland.
“This tool can help people to understand and talk about how the changing climate is shaping local weather as it happens,” Andrew Pershing, director of climate science at Climate Central, said.
Almost all people in the world, some 96 percent, experienced temperatures caused by climate change in the past year, according to Climate Central.
“Complaining about the weather is as American as apple pie and … a baseball game, but we’ve never had anything to blame,” Pershing wrote in an opinion piece for The Hill. “Thanks to advances in climate science, we can say on any given day how much climate change boosted the odds of your ice cream cone melting in your lap.”
The group’s Global Climate Shift Index applies a five-point scale that indicates how much more likely or frequent daily high and low temperatures have become because of climate change. A level of 3 means the day’s temperature was three times more likely to be caused by climate change than if there were no climate change.
The four cities covered in Maine have a ranking of less than 1, as does most of New England. Pershing said that most of Maine has experienced climate change, but the effects are minor compared with locations closer to the equator such as Mexico or Puerto Rico.
Pershing said the data will be useful to meteorologists and others interested in weather events and health care workers who need to monitor people, especially the elderly, who are affected by heat. The tool also allows comparisons with temperatures going back one and one-half years.
“There certainly are days where New England sees strong signals of climate change,” he said. “And the impacts in Maine are going to accelerate.”
