Climate change made record heatwaves in India 30 times more likely, reports!
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. The report was published on the basis of a study conducted by an international team of climate scientists. Large parts of India and Pakistan experienced an unusually early and long-running heatwave, beginning in 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 analyzed 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 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 conducted by 29 researchers as part of the World Weather Attribution group, including scientists from universities and meteorological agencies in India, Pakistan, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, the UK, and the US.
