A general view shows seagulls in Ashdod port, as a storm approaches Israel’s shores, Jan. 4, 2018. Photo: Reuters / Amir Cohen / File.

i24 News – An Israeli-led study found that climate change is causing winter storms in the Southern Hemisphere to intensify much faster than predicted, according to findings published on Thursday.

The study, headed by Dr. Rei Chemke of Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science and published in the Nature Climate Change journal, indicated that such storms already reached the strength not expected until 2080.

Along with other scientists around the world, Chemke compared previous predictions of human-caused intensification of winter storms in the Southern Hemisphere with current storm monitoring.

“It became clear that storm intensification over recent decades has already reached levels projected to occur in the year 2080,” said a statement from the institute, The Times of Israel reported.

The study “shows that current climate models severely underestimate the intensification in mid-latitude storm tracks in recent decades,” the report said.

Chemke told Haaretz that previous forecasts were “too optimistic.”

“In reality, the forecast for the future will be worse than we thought and the storms will intensify beyond what we had predicted to date,” he said, adding that climate change’s effects on humanity could be greater than thought.

According to the models used in previous reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, carbon emissions would significantly worsen winter storms only by the end of the century.

However, the new study compared such forecasts with new data using intricate computer systems to better track trends, which pose “a real and significant threat to societies in the Southern Hemisphere in the next decades,” said Chemke.