This Summer’s Heatwaves Would Have Been ‘Almost Impossible’ Without Human-Caused Warming, a New Analysis Shows
By Bob Berwyn
Widespread summer heatwaves like those currently baking the Northern Hemisphere, with temperatures soaring above 110 degrees Fahrenheit simultaneously in North America, Asia and Europe, will be common in just a few decades unless greenhouse gas emissions are immediately curtailed, an international team of scientists said Monday.
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.