Every heatwave occurring today is more intense due to climate change

The author is Adam Vaughan.

There is no need for studies to tease out global warming's role in individual extreme heat episodes according to the scientist who pioneered such studies.

Extreme weather events can be blamed on climate change. Climate change wouldn't usually be thought of as a cause of the hot weather in China and Japan this week. Friederike Otto of Imperial College London is the leader of such studies and they can be turned around in days.

Otto says we don't need to wait before declaring climate change's role. She says that every heatwave that is occurring today is more likely because of climate change. Changes to land use can affect the likelihood of a heatwave.

She says studies will need to be done to find out how much more likely heatwaves were due to climate change. Otto thinks that we shouldn't stop doing it

She says that the status quo in which many of those studies are carried out by volunteer efforts is not sustainable. The UK's Met Office should conduct more studies to build up a picture of climate change impacts, according to Otto and her colleagues.

The head of Climate Attribution at the Met Office says that work is already being done. He says that they are able to quickly attribute some extreme events using a peer-reviewed method.

The extreme weather type that is changing fastest due to climate change is heatwaves. There will be a greater increase in the occurrence of severe heatwaves with every degree of global warming.

Climate change is not to blame for most severe droughts around the world. Most wildfires are not, with a high confidence in a climate link only found in fires in the west. Climate change has led to an increase in heavy rain events in most parts of the world.

During the 2003 European heatwave and the 2010 Russia heatwave, four-fifths of the deaths were caused by climate change. Many parts of the world don't have a definition of a heatwave and therefore the toll is probably underestimated. Most of the world's population live in Asia, Africa, South and Central America and the Caribbean, but only a small percentage of deaths are recorded there.

The journal title is Environmental Research: Climate.

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