BRUSSELS — This week’s extraordinary heat wave is the worst to ever hit Western Europe and could not have occurred without humans heating the planet by burning fossil fuels, scientists say.
Europeans from Spain to the United Kingdom have been sweltering under extreme heat this week, with temperatures surging to near or above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) even before peak summer takes hold.
New research published Friday finds that this kind of event would have been “virtually impossible” just 50 years ago and has become vastly more likely even over the past two decades due to global warming.
The World Weather Attribution consortium, which includes scientists from Imperial College London and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, used peer-reviewed methods to compare this week’s heat wave to other hot European summers in 1976 and 2003.
