Europe is in the grip of a record-breaking heatwave and wildfires are raging across the Mediterranean. Here's how climate change drives these events.
Climate change makes heatwaves hotter and more frequent. This is the case for most land regions, and has been confirmed by the U.N.'s global panel of climate scientists .
A study in the journal Nature this month found that heatwaves in Europe have increased three-to-four times faster than in other northern mid-latitudes such as the United States. The authors linked this to changes in the jet stream - a fast west-to-east air current in the northern hemisphere.To find out exactly how much climate change affected a specific heatwave, scientists conduct "attribution studies".
"On average on land, heat extremes that would have happened once every 10 years without human influence on the climate are now three times more frequent," said ETH Zurich climate scientist Sonia Seneviratne. A heatwave that occurred once per decade in the pre-industrial era would happen 4.1 times a decade at 1.5°C of warming, and 5.6 times at 2°C, the IPCC says.
Hotter weather also saps moisture from vegetation, turning it into dry fuel that helps fires to spread. Countries, including Spain, face the challenge of shrinking populations in rural areas, as people move to cities, leaving smaller workforces to clear vegetation and avoid "fuel" for forest fires building up.
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