New analysis shows that global warming would have prevented the devastation caused by Europe's heatwaves and wildfires this summer.
The summer 2021 was the hottest ever recorded on the continent. Average temperatures were about 1C higher than normal. Extreme heat led to wildfires that resulted in premature deaths.
Researchers calculated the likelihood that the climate crisis would increase the risk of high temperatures. The frequency of a European summer as warm as 2021 has been almost non-existent for the past 150 years.
However, since the 1990s, carbon emissions have risen to an unprecedented level. The frequency is now expected to be once every three years.
This analysis serves as a stark reminder for the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, that global warming is causing severe damage to lives and livelihoods. Scientists warn that if countries fail to reduce their carbon emissions significantly by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050 then the record heat of 2021 could strike every year until the end of this century.
The Met Office's Nikos Christidis, who conducted the analysis, stated that despite the recent increase in record heat, these results are not surprising. Already, climate change is making extreme weather more severe.
Prof Petteri Talas, head of UN World Meteorological Organization, stated that extreme events are now the norm. In August, Sicily set a European temperature record of 48.8C. Taalas stated that Cop26 is a crucial opportunity to get us back on track.
This analysis was based on 14 climate models and scores upon model runs. It calculated how often the record summer of 2021 will occur in today's climate that has been influenced by humans compared to a climate without any human influence.
The research covered the period June to August, and all of Europe as well as Yekaterinburg in Russia.
The frequency of a hot summer without climate change in the world was greater than one in 10,000 years for large parts of the 20th century. Christidis stated that this event was so rare it was almost impossible to estimate a probability.
This same scientific approach has clearly shown links between global warming and severe weather. At least 600 times more likely was the record-breaking heatwave that hit Siberia in January 2020 and February 2020, while floods in Germany in July and Belgium in July were up to nine times more probable.
Professor Peter Stott also from the Met Office stated: We can be more certain than ever about linking extreme weather events with climate change. It is evident that the quicker we reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the less severe the impacts will be.
Friederike Otto from Imperial College London who led the Siberian study said that the new study was a stark reminder of what 1.2C (of global warming to date) means. It is hard to imagine what the summers would be like at 2.7C.
Bob Ward, policy director at Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, London School of Economics said that this study clearly shows that man-made climate changes resulting from fossil fuel burning and other human activities are responsible for the extreme heatwaves in summer.
Both humans and wildlife suffered significant losses due to heatwave conditions that killed people on the continent and increased evaporation at higher temperatures, which turned forests into fuel for destructive wildfires.
For at least 30 years, these extreme temperature events in Europe are expected to continue increasing in severity and frequency until there is a net zero emission of greenhouse gases in the world.
Global warming has been shown to have made an extreme heatwave that resulted in deadly forest fires in Spain and Portugal in 2017 10 times more likely than in previous studies. In Portugal, 64 people died. Research has shown that floods in France and England as far back 2000 are significantly more likely due to global warming.
