7 July 2021
By Adam Vaughan
The recent deadly and record-breaking heatwave in North America would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change, according to scientists who say they are very worried about the prospect of similar events occurring around the world.
An international team has found that the heatwave, which may have killed hundreds and saw Canada’s temperature record being broken by nearly 5°C in [9°F] the village of Lytton, was made 150 times more likely by global warming.
The temperature highs were 2°C [3.6°F] hotter than they would have been without the human activity that has warmed Earth, say the researchers at the World Weather Attribution project. By the 2040s, they warn, such a heatwave could be another 1°C [1.8°F] warmer.
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The heatwave could have just been bad luck aggravated by climate change, says the team. An alternative, more worrying, explanation is that it could be due to non-linear interactions in the climate, such as the severe drought in the south of the area studied. More research will be needed to show if such non-linearities – sometimes referred to as tipping points in Earth’s systems as the world warms – were to blame. If they were, that would show today’s climate models are too conservative, says van Oldenborgh.
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