Human-caused climate change made U.K. heat wave 10 times more likely, study says
LONDON — When Britain experienced its highest temperatures ever recorded, in an extreme heat wave last week, scientists had little doubt the blistering event was supercharged by humanity’s runaway release of greenhouse gases.
Now a group of researchers, using observational data and climate modeling, have sought to calculate just how much human-fueled climate change is to blame. The analysis, conducted by the widely respected World Weather Attribution group, concluded that global warming made this British heat wave “at least 10 times more likely.”
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.