Climate Change Definitely Probably Caused This Heat Wave
Scientists are becoming more willing to blame global warming for heat waves; they’re less certain about storms and floods.
Looking for a way to cool down.
Photographer: Lukas Schulze/Bongarts/Getty Images)
Just a few weeks after a record-setting heat wave in June, scorching temperatures have returned to Western Europe. It was also really hot a few days ago in the Eastern and Central U.S., and now temperature records are being broken in California. Is human-induced climate change to blame?
That’s the wrong question, according to the 2016 National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine report on “Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change.” An answer to such a query “cannot usually be provided in a deterministic sense because natural variability almost always plays a role,” so it’s better to ask something like: “Are events of this severity becoming more or less likely because of climate change?”