Impact of climate change on the distribution of extreme temperatures as natural disasters

Abstract

Much of the scientific community agrees that global temperature as a result of climate change has increased significantly in the last century, and will continue to grow in the near future. According to the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC, 2001 (IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the global average temperature has increased by about 0.6 degrees in the 20th century, although climate warming was not uniform neither spatially nor temporally, as was indicated by observed changes and modelling studies. Variations in global or regional cases of extreme air temperatures that occurred due to changes in climate cause more and more attention lately as living beings and ecosystems and human society are sensitive to the severity, frequency and persistence of cases of extreme temperatures. In this regard, in order to effectively protect and respond to emergencies caused by harmful temperature extremes, it is necessary among other things to comprehensively investigate the mentioned natural phenomenon, so the subject of this paper will be an analysis of climate change as well as form, consequences, temporal and geospatial distribution of extreme temperatures. Using an international database on natural disasters of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), based in Brussels, with the support of program for statistical analysis (SPSS) and the method of thematic cartography, we have tried to point out the number, trends, consequences, temporal and geospatial distribution of extreme temperature in the period from 1900 to 2013, as well as the need for an adequate response of society to this type of natural hazard.