The heatwaves that hit North America and Europe in July would have been “virtually impossible without climate change”, said researchers who stressed that extreme weather events would occur with greater frequency.
The World Weather Attribution research group, an academic collaboration, added that human-induced warming made the recent extreme heat in China “at least 50 times more likely”.
Events like the simultaneous and record-breaking temperatures in July could now be expected roughly “once every 15 years in North America, about once every 10 years in southern Europe and approximately once every five years in China”, WWA said in a report on Tuesday. The group found that about 75 per cent of extreme weather events it had recently assessed were made more likely or severe by climate change.