Blistering heat that has baked swathes of North America and Europe this month would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change, researchers said yesterday, as intense temperatures spark health alerts and stoke ferocious wildfires.
With tens of million people affected in the northern hemisphere and this month on track to be the hottest month globally since records began, experts warned that worse is to come unless we reduce planet-heating emissions. Severe heat waves have gripped southern Europe, parts of the US, Mexico and China this month, with temperatures above 45oC.
In the new rapid analysis of the scorching temperatures, scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group found that the heat waves in parts of Europe and North America would have been almost impossible without climate change.
Photo: AP
Temperatures in China were made 50 times more likely by global warming, they found.
“The role of climate change is absolutely overwhelming,” said climate scientist Friederike Otto, of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London.
Intense temperatures have swept much of the southwest and southern US, including in Phoenix, Arizona, which saw a record-breaking three straight weeks of highs above 43oC.
Photo: AP
Blazes on the Greek mainland and islands have caused tens of thousands to flee, sent tourists scrambling for evacuation flights and prompted the prime minister to say the country is “at war.”
In Beijing, the government urged elderly people to stay indoors and children to shorten outdoor playtime to reduce exposure to the heat and ground-level ozone pollution.
Scientists have already established that climate change — with about 1.2oC of global warming since the late 1800s — has made heat waves in general hotter, longer and more frequent. To trace how far this month’s heat waves in the northern hemisphere had departed from what would have been expected without that warming, Otto and her WWA colleagues used weather data and computer model simulations to compare the climate as it is today with that of the past.
Researchers said they focused on periods when “the heat was most dangerous in each region.”
Otto said that in the past it would have been “basically impossible” that such severe heat waves would happen at the same time, and that people should no longer be surprised to see temperature records tumbling.
“As long as we keep burning fossil fuels we will see more and more of these extremes,” she said.
The researchers found that these severe heat waves can now be expected roughly once every 15 years in North America, every 10 years in southern Europe and every five years in China. They would also become even more frequent — happening every two to five years — if temperature rise reaches 2oC, which is expected in about 30 years unless countries fulfil their Paris Agreement pledges and rapidly cut emissions.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
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