Climate change made heat wave more deadly

 
When a heat wave began to scorch Canada and the US in late June - killing elderly people alone in their homes and fueling wildfires that wiped out an entire village - scientists said burning fossil fuels had changed the climate enough to make the temperature extremes worse.

One week later, they know by how much.

Global warming made the hottest day of the North American heat wave 150 times more likely and 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) hotter, according to a rapid attribution study released Thursday by an international team of 27 scientists from the World Weather Attribution initiative (WWA). Temperatures broke records in Oregon and Washington, in the US, and in British Columbia, in Canada. They reached a high of 49.6 C (121 F) that researchers say would have been "virtually impossible" without climate change, DW reports.

The study, which has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, is the latest example of scientists using models to swiftly assess the role of greenhouse gas emissions in exacerbating extreme weather. Its findings dispel a myth prevalent in rich countries that climate change only hurts people far away from them or in the distant future.

"We are entering uncharted territory," said study co-author Sonia Seneviratne, from the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. "Much higher temperature records will be reached if we don't manage to stop greenhouse gas emissions and halt global warming."