The UK’s extreme heatwave would have been ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change

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The heat wave in the UK last week was 10 times more likely to be caused by climate change. The analysis was published by the World Weather Attribution initiative, a collaboration of scientists from universities and research institutions around the world.

Mark McCarthy, science manager of the National Climate Information Centre, said that it would be impossible for the UK to reach 40C in a climate unaffected by human-caused climate change.

For the first time, the Met Office issued a red heat warning for parts of England on July 18 and 19. Illness and death may occur among the fit and healthy, and not just in high-risk groups, according to the Health Security Agency.

On July 19th, the temperature in Coningsby set a new record of 40.3 degrees Celsius. Last week, 46 different weather stations in the UK met or broke the UK's temperature record of 38.7 degrees Celsius.

The heat made it hard for communities to get used to it. The infrastructure was mangled last week due to the heat. The fire service in London responded to more fires in a single day than it has since World War II. 948 people may have died from the heat in England and Wales from July 17th to 19th according to an early analysis.

Without human-caused climate change, temperatures in the UK would not have been as high. The average high temperature in London is around 23 degrees Celsius. Even with global warming, last week's ridiculous temperatures are an outlier for those regions under red alert. The figure can be different from locale to locale.

The scientists focused on the regions under the red heat warning to conduct their analysis. The climate crisis made the UK's extreme heatwave at least ten times more likely, according to both methods.

The effects of climate change were more severe in the real world than in the models. Without greenhouse gas emissions, last week's heatwave would have been 4 degrees cooler in the pre-industrial era. Without global warming, climate models found that temperatures would have been lower. Is the future even more disastrously hot than we already know?