Attribution Science Grows In Power & Accuracy, Clarifying Degree To Which Overall Warming Drives Individual Disasters

At least 24 previously impossible heatwaves have struck communities across the planet, a new assessment has shown, providing stark evidence of how severely human-caused global heating is supercharging extreme weather. The impossible heatwaves have taken lives across North America, Europe and Asia, with scientific analyses showing that they would have had virtually zero chance of happening without the extra heat trapped by fossil fuel emissions.

Further studies have assessed how much worse global heating has made the consequences of extreme weather, with shocking results. Millions of people, and many thousands of newborn babies, would not have died prematurely without the extra human-caused heat, according to the estimates. In total, studies calculating the role of the climate crisis in what are now unnatural disasters show 550 heatwaves, floods, storms, droughts and wildfires have been made significantly more severe or more frequent by global heating. This roll-call of suffering is only a glimpse of the true damage, however. Most extreme weather events have not been analysed by scientists.

The new database of hundreds of studies that analyse the role of global heating in extreme weather was compiled by the website Carbon Brief and shared with the Guardian. It is the only comprehensive assessment and provides overwhelming proof that the climate emergency is here today, taking lives and livelihoods in all corners of the world. The studies have examined the impacts resulting from about 1.3C of global heating to date. The prospect of 2.5C to 3.0C, which is where the world is headed, is therefore catastrophic, warn the scientists. They urge the world’s nations meeting at the Cop29 climate summit in Azerbaijan to deliver deep and rapid cuts to carbon emissions and to fund the protection desperately needed by many communities against now-inevitable climate disasters.

The science of determining the role of global heating in extreme weather events is called attribution. In its early days, more than a decade ago, the relatively subtle influence detected was likened to finding the fingerprints of climate change. Today, the influence is so obvious that the researchers are instead like eye witnesses to a crime. “Some say climate scientists shouldn’t paint a picture of doom and gloom. But we are humans, we have feelings, we have children,” said Dr Joyce Kimutai at Imperial College London, UK, part of the World Weather Attribution group and an adviser with Kenya’s Cop29 delegation. “The increasing role of climate change in the intensities of extreme weather events is definitely worrying,” she said. “And if this continues it’s really going to be difficult for everyone. The climate crisis is not discriminating how it affects people. It’s hitting every part of the world.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/18/climate-crisis-to-blame-for-dozens-of-impossible-heatwaves-studies-reveal