The recent, record-breaking heat waves that have scorched the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, China and southern Europe were made dramatically more likely due to human-caused climate change, researchers report July 25 in a study from the World Weather Attribution network.
These intense and at times deadly heat waves are occurring as high-pressure systems stall across the Northern Hemisphere, creating barely budging heat domes (SN: 7/19/23). Phoenix, for example, has reached at least 43.3° C (110° Fahrenheit) every day for more than three weeks.
Otto and her colleagues used computers to simulate Earth’s climate, with and without human-caused climate change, to assess how likely the recent heat waves would have been under different climate conditions.
In a world without climate change, they found, the recent extreme heat in China would be expected roughly once every 250 years. Now, it’s a once-in-five-years phenomenon, or 50 times more likely to occur. Meanwhile the extreme heat waves in southern Europe and North America, which would have been virtually impossible without climate change, are now likely to occur once every 10 years and 15 years, respectively.
2023-07-25 00:00:00
Source from www.sciencenews.org
