A week ago in Canada, the flames engulfed an entire village. Lytton burned down. Its residents without a roof. In the days before the inferno, the town in British Columbia broke three heat records in a row: 46.6, 47.9, 49.5 degrees. Hundreds of people died suddenly in western Canada. Almost three times as many as usual.
A study now comes to the end: Without climate change, things would most likely never have come this far in Canada.
150 times more likely
The World Weather Attribution Group, made up of high-ranking scientists from ETH Zurich, among others, shows that the warming made the heat wave in North America 150 times more likely.
In addition to Canada, the western United States was also affected by the extreme heat. The experts attribute the temperatures to several factors. A heat dome had formed over these areas last week. Usually the jet stream, a strong high wind over North America, winds the hot air away. But last week it was extremely volatile. Accordingly, air masses from the tropics and subtropics built up for days.
“What we see is unprecedented”
The researchers have calculated the probability of this extreme weather. Once under today’s conditions, once at those before industrialization.
Result: The heat wave is not only 150 times more likely today, it is also significantly hotter! It was two degrees warmer than one could have expected under the conditions before industrialization.
The participating researcher Friederike Otto from Oxford University said: “What we see is unprecedented. It’s not normal for heat records to be broken by four or five degrees Celsius. “
Extreme heat soon every five years?
The current event is extremely unlikely, even in today’s climatic conditions: The models only envisage it once every 1000 years. So global warming and bad luck!
Almost 48 degrees! It has never been so hot in Canada(00:44)
However, the study presents a second explanation, which is far more worrying: Climate change has reached a threshold at which extreme weather phenomena that were previously not thought possible are increasing by leaps and bounds. However, the data collected have not yet indicated this.
But the extraordinary occurrences could be a foretaste of the future – also in Switzerland. When global warming reaches two degrees, events like the heat in North America could happen every five to ten years instead of an average of once every 1,000 years. (hah / SDA)