How climate change fuels extreme heat worldwide
Climate change is driving dangerous heat waves across the Northern Hemisphere this week and will continue to deliver dangerous weather for decades to come, research shows.
«It is a worldwide heat wave that we are now suffering. That puts the heat under our decisions,» said Christiana Figueres, a former U.N. climate agency chief.
Here's how climate change is pushing heat to new extremes.
HOW IS CLIMATE CHANGE DRIVING HEAT?
As the continued burning of fossil fuels releases more carbon emissions to the atmosphere, the air can trap more heat from the sun — causing the average global temperature to rise over time.
Already, the global average temperature has risen nearly 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) since the start of the Industrial Revolution, when Western countries began burning coal and other fossil fuels.
That higher baseline means climate change is already making all heat waves hotter than they would have been without atmospheric warming. They are also becoming more frequent overall — and more dangerous.
Any significant heat wave «has been made substantially more likely and warmer than it otherwise would have been as a result of human-caused climate change,» UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain told reporters earlier this month.
«At this point, that is an almost trivial statement to make because there's so much evidence supporting it.»
HOW MUCH OF A FACTOR IS CLIMATE CHANGE?
Beyond global warming, there are other factors and conditions that can affect heat waves. Climate systems such as El Nino
