Siberian heatwave of 2020 almost impossible without climate change

2050 is only 30 years from now

https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/siberian-heatwave-of-2020-almost-impossible-without-climate-change/?ftag=YHF4eb9d17

5 July, 2020
Authors

Andrew Ciavarella, Daniel Cotterill, Peter Stott | Met Office UK
Sarah Kew, Sjoukje Philip, Geert Jan van Oldenborgh | KNMI
Amalie Skålevåg, Philip Lorenz | DWD
Yoann Robin | Météo France
Friederike Otto | University of Oxford
Mathias Hauser, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Flavio Lehner | ETH Zurich
Olga Zolina | IGE/UGA, P.P.Shirshov Institute of Oceanology


In the first six months of 2020, Siberia experienced a period of unusually high temperatures, including a record-breaking 38 degrees C in the town of Verkhoyansk on 20 June, causing wide-scale impacts including wildfires, loss of permafrost, and an invasion of pests.

In our latest study, scientists from France, Germany, Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland and the UK collaborated to examine whether and to what extent human-induced climate change had a part to play in making this heatwave hotter and more likely.

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The current Siberian heat has contributed to raising the world’s average temperature to the 2nd hottest on record for the period January to May. Using published scientific methods we looked at a large region spanning most of Siberia, inclusive of the area affected by the prolonged six-month heat and the town of Verkhoyansk that recorded the record daily temperature for the Arctic region. We analysed the average temperatures between January and June 2020 for the large region, as well as the hottest maximum daily temperature in June 2020 for Verkhoyansk. We found in both cases that this event would have effectively been impossible without human-induced climate change.

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Main findings

The results showed with high confidence that the January to June 2020 prolonged heat was made at least 600 times more likely as a result of human-induced climate change.
We note that even with climate change, the prolonged heat was a very rare event expected to occur less than once every 130 years.
The results for the town of Verkhoyansk show that the record breaking June temperatures were also made much more likely (upwards of many thousands of times), though there is less confidence in this result.
Combining the values from the models and weather observations shows that for the large region the same six-months hot spell would have been at least 2 degrees Celsius cooler had it occurred in 1900 instead of 2020. For Verkhoyansk, maximum June temperatures increased due to climate change by at least 1 degree compared to 1900.
By 2050 the Siberian region could expect to have temperatures increase by at least 2.5 degrees compared to 1900, but this increase could be as high as 7 degrees.
This would correspond to an additional warming of at least 0.5 degrees and possibly up to around 5 degrees by 2050 compared to today.

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