The extreme events are happening against the backdrop of a very fast-warming climate. The world is already 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in preindustrial times, and the next five years are predicted to be the hottest on record.
While attribution studies are not done for every extreme weather event, they help bring home the realities of the direct and immediate damage the climate crisis is doing to people’s lives, which scientists say will only get worse if the world continues to pump out planet-warming pollution. The heat wave was made at least 600 times more likely by the climate crisis, the scientists concluded, finding such prolonged Arctic heat would happen less than once every 80,000 years without human-induced climate change.
“Our results provide a strong warning: Our rapidly warming climate is bringing us into uncharted territory that has significant consequences for health, well-being, and livelihoods,” the authors wrote. “The 2022 Northern Hemisphere summer is a good example of how extreme events caused by climate change can also unfold over large regions in longer periods of time,” Otto said.
“Almost half of the country’s population is affected, over 3 million people are displaced,” Mamunur Rahman Malik, the Somalia representative for the World Health Organization, told CNN in April. “The country continues to pay the price of global warming and climate change,” he added. Large parts of South Asia faced a brutal heat wave in April. Countries including Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos, India and Bangladesh all saw new all-time temperature records.
Human-caused climate change made the conditions leading to the severe fires at least 30% more likely, a World Weather Attribution analysis found.Western U.S. drought, 2020-23