July’s Heat Waves ‘Virtually Impossible’ Without Climate Change
Once-rare events are becoming commonplace in a warmer climate, researchers say.
Residents wait in line outside a hospital to receive water bottles during a heat wave in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, Mexico, on June 22, 2023.
Photographer: Mauricio Palos/BloombergThis summer’s extreme heat in the US and southern Europe would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change, according to a rapid analysis by scientists who study how climate change influences extreme weather events.
The international scientific project World Weather Attribution found that peak heat this July — with temperatures over 45C in Mexico and the western US, southern Europe and the lowlands of China — was made more likely and more severe by human-induced climate change. In Europe and North America, the heat waves would have been almost impossible, while China’s heat was made 50 times more likely by climate change.