The record-breaking heat that’s scorching Europe day and night this month would not have been possible without climate change, according to a new study.The World Weather Attribution rapid study released Friday found that the heat would have been virtually impossible just five decades ago, and is 200 times more likely today than it would have been 20 years ago.Millions in France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe are experiencing extreme temperatures and humidity this week associated with a heat dome. Daytime temperatures have topped 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in many places, while high nighttime temperatures have also made it harder to cool down and recover.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe scientists estimated that a heat wave with similar characteristics occurring in the climate of June 1976 would have been about 3.5 degrees Celsius (6.3 Fahrenheit) cooler during the day and about 2 degrees Celsius cooler (3.6 Fahrenheit) in 2003. The nighttime temperatures would have been about 2.4 degrees Celsius (4.3 Fahrenheit) cooler in June 1976 and about 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 Fahrenheit) cooler in 2003.They chose 1976 and 2003 for comparison because those years saw extreme heat in Europe.“The increase in temperatures was so dramatic that we would have expected to have never seen this event in the 1976 climate,” said the study’s lead author Theodore Keeping, also a climate scientist at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London. “And it would also still have been very, very rare, even 23 years ago in 2003.”Climate change is the driving force behind the heatWorld Weather Attribution, a Europe-based collaborative of scientists who study the causes of global extreme weather events, began assessing in 2015 the extent to which those could be attributed to climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas. The organization’s rapid attribution studies, including this one, aren’t peer-reviewed but use peer-reviewed methodology.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe current study used observed temperature data and forecasts for an analysis of the heat wave that started on June 18.It also found that 45% of the 850 cities analyzed across 30 European countries have broken, or are expected to hit, records for heat stress levels, a measure that includes humidity and temperature.”It directly relates to the heat stress on the human body and our ability to cool ourselves down, and it’s a really good metric for the expected health impacts we expect to see from this heat wave,” Keeping said. Heat and humidity make for a dangerous combination for humans.Ultimately, this marks the most severe heat wave to have ever bee …
