https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/europe-heat-wave-climate-change-1.4904410
[links in online article]
Scientists link Europe heat wave to human-caused global warming
Similar temperatures would happen once in 1,000 years without climate
change, study finds
The Associated Press · Posted: Aug 02, 2019
The heat wave that smashed temperature records in western Europe last
month was made more intense by human-caused climate change, according to
a study published Friday.
The rapid study by a respected team of European scientists points to an
array of evidence that man-made global warming was behind the
continent's most recent heat wave.
"The July 2019 heat wave was so extreme over continental Western Europe
that the observed magnitudes would have been extremely unlikely without
climate change," the study concluded.
In countries where millions of people sweltered through the heat wave,
temperatures would have been 1.5 to 3 C lower in a world without
human-induced climate change, the study said.
Global warming is also making such extreme heat more frequent, the study
by experts from France, the Netherlands, Britain, Switzerland and
Germany found.
The scientists said that the temperatures recorded in France and the
Netherlands could happen every 50 to 150 years in the world's current
climate. Without "human influence on climate," the temperatures would
likely happen less than once in 1,000 years.
3 C hotter by 2050
The report's lead author, Robert Vautard of the Institut Pierre-Simon
Laplace in France, said Europe needs to get used to such heat waves,
which are likely to become more frequent and intense.
"This will go up and if we don't do anything about climate change, about
emissions, these heat waves, which today have an amplitude of 42
degrees, they will have three degrees more in 2050, so that is going to
make 45 [degrees], roughly speaking," he told The Associated Press.
"What will be the impacts on agriculture? What will be the impacts on
water?" Vautard said. He said it will increase "tension in society that
we may not be so well equipped to cope with."
While the heat wave broke in western Europe after a few days late last
month, the extreme temperatures have since shifted north and are causing
massive ice melts in Greenland and the Arctic.
The scientists calculated the odds of this type of heat occurring now
and how often it would have happened in a world without man-made global
warming and compared them. They created the simulations by using eight
different sets of complex computer models.
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2016 studied this new
scientific method of climate attribution and pronounced it valid.
Kathie Dello, a climate scientist from NC State University in North
Carolina, said the study helps to pin the blame for the heat wave on
climate change.
"If searching for a culprit for the intensity of these recent European
heat waves, climate change is the obvious culprit," Dello said in an
email. "Attribution is just dusting for fingerprints. Climate change
will continue to be a menace when it comes to extreme heat, making these
events more likely and more intense."
Another expert not connected to the study, Celine Bonfils of the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said the findings
are clear: "Record hot weather events are becoming more likely, and
human-induced climate change is causing this increase in heat wave
frequency."
The new report agreed with their assessments, saying that every recent
European heat wave that has been analyzed "was found to be made much
more likely and more intense due to human-induced climate change."
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