Climate change made record heatwave in India 30 times more likely: Study - The Week

The record breaking heatwave in India and Pakistan, which caused widespread human suffering and hit global wheat supplies, was about 30 times more likely to happen due to human-caused climate change, according to a study by an international team of climate scientists published on Monday.
Large parts of India and Pakistan experienced an unusually early and long-running heatwave, beginning early March, which has largely persisted until now.
March was the hottest in India since records began 122 years ago, with Pakistan also seeing record temperatures, the researchers said.
To quantify the effect of climate change on the long-running high temperatures in India and Pakistan, they analysed weather data and computer simulations to compare the climate as it is today, after about 1.2 degrees Celsius of global warming since the late 1800s, with the climate of the past.
The attribution study, which determines the influence of climate change on a particular weather event, focused on the average maximum daily temperatures during March and April, in Northwestern India and Southeastern Pakistan, which were most severely affected.
The results showed that an event like the current long-running heatwave is still rare, with a 1 per cent chance of happening each year, but human-caused climate change has made it about 30 times more likely to happen.
The analysis suggests the heatwave would have been extraordinarily rare without the effects of human-induced climate change.
The study was...

Your content is great. However, if any of the content contained herein violates any rights of yours, including those of copyright, please contact us immediately by e-mail at media[@]kissrpr.com.