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

 

Angry Weather by Friederike Otto tells readers about the importance of attribution science in understanding climate change. The Weather Attribution Team has developed a way to connect localized extreme weather events to climate change. To do this, they must be able to model what the world would be like if there was no climate change and then calculate if the weather event was created by climate change.

Otto considers recent extreme weather and explains if it was connected to climate change. She also addresses broader climate change issues.

Attribution science is a complex idea, and perhaps if Otto did detail the process I would not understand it. Still, it is a weakness in the book that the scientific method is not discussed.

Parts of the book were interesting, and she addresses some issues with passion. But overall, it was a boring read and it was hard to pick it up to finish the book. I don't know if the translation added to this problem, or if this remarkable scientist just isn't a remarkable writer.

I was given a free book by the publisher through LibraryThing in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

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

By Friederike Otto

Translated by Sarah Pybus

hardcover $32.95

ISBN: 9781771646147

Published On: September 15, 2020 

from the publisher

A pioneering scientist solves a pressing climate question: Can we pin the blame for individual extreme weather events on humans?

Massive fires, widespread floods, category 4 hurricanes—weather disasters are becoming more frequent each year, but not everyone agrees on what causes them. Renowned University of Oxford researcher Friederike Otto provides an answer with attribution science, a revolutionary method for pinpointing the role of climate change in extreme weather events. Anchoring her book with the gripping, day-by-day story of Hurricane Harvey, which caused over a hundred deaths and $125 billion in damage in 2017, 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 a time when our inability to determine climate change’s role in weather events has impacted everything from how much aid a devastated region receives to the culpability of corporations and governments, Otto’s research laid out in this groundbreaking book will have profound impacts, both today and for the future of humankind.  

Published in Partnership with the David Suzuki Institute.

Friederike (Fredi) Otto is a physicist, climate researcher, associate professor, and the acting director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. Otto is also a co-investigator 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 others.