Climate change made North American heat wave likely: Study

WASHINGTON: A group of leading climate scientists found in an analysis that the record-breaking heat wave in western United States of America (USA) and Canada at the end of June would be ‘virtually impossible’ without human induced climate change. The group of scientists named as the World Weather Attribution Group said that due to global warming caused by Green House Gas emissions, the heat waves were 150 times more likely to happen.

The heat waves caused rise in temperature in Pacific Northwest areas of the two countries by several degrees and Lytton in Canada saw record temperature of 49.6 degree Celsius and was completely destroyed by wildfires. Friederike Otto, Climatologist, university of Oxford, said that there is no doubt that climate change has played a key role in the occurrence The scientists studied the historical observations and computer simulations to compare the climate with present situation which is 1.2-degree Celsius rise in temperature due to global warming since the late 1800s.

Predicting the future occurrences, study said that if the planet warms by 2 degrees Celsius which could happen as early as 2040s at the current rate, heat waves like this can occur every five to ten years. The researchers suggested two broad explanations as to how the climate change made it more likely. First explanation says that the pre-existing drought deprived the area of evaporative cooling and made a slow-moving high pressure system in the atmosphere called “heat dome” which was supercharged by climate change. Second theory suggests that the climate change has crossed the threshold where even a small amount overall global warming is inducing a sharp rise in temperatures.