https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/25/world/heat-wave-climate-change-us-china-europ... Heat waves in US and Europe would have been
‘virtually impossible’ without climate change, new report finds
By Laura Paddison, CNN
Updated 5:32 AM EDT, Tue July 25, 2023
Extreme heat waves across three continents this month were made significantly more likely by the human-caused climate crisis, according to a new analysis released Tuesday as temperatures are still blazing in parts of the Northern Hemisphere.
The “heat hell” searing parts of the United States and southern Europe would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change, while climate change made China’s heat wave at least 50 times more likely, according to a rapid attribution analysis from the World Weather Attribution initiative.
The WWA, a group of international scientists who assess the role of climate change in extreme weather events, spent a week analyzing the dangerous heat waves that have swept the Northern Hemisphere in July, destroying crops and livestock, triggering wildfires, exacerbating water stress and killing people across three continents.
VIDEO THUMBNAIL Extreme heat explainer 1
Temperatures in Death Valley reached 128 degrees Fahrenheit (53.3 Celsius) this month and the city of Phoenix has experienced a record-smashing 25 consecutive days of temperatures hotter than 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius).
China posted an all-time national high temperature at 52.2 degrees Celsius (126 Fahrenheit) earlier this month. And in Europe, local records were broken across parts of Spain and Italy as temperatures edged towards Europe’s all-time record of 48.8 degrees Celsius (119.8 Fahrenheit).
To understand the extent to which the climate crisis affected the likelihood and intensity of this July’s extreme heat, the WWA team examined weather data and computer models to compare the world’s current climate – which is around 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial era – with the climate of the past.
They found that “the role of climate change is absolutely overwhelming,”
said Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London.
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