Britain’s heatwave would be “impossible” without climate change

Without human-caused climate change, the heatwave would have been 2°C to 4°C

Sweltering temperatures that baked Britons last week would have been impossible if climate change was not happening.

That’s one of the key messages conveyed in a new analysis by the World Weather Attribution which suggests the record-breaking temperature of more than 40°C seen last week was the result of human-caused climate change.

Combining climate models and weather observations, the report stresses that climate change made the event at least ten times more likely.

The authors of the study note that a UK heatwave of such scale would be about up to 4°C cooler in preindustrial times.

The observed temperatures averaged over two days, the 18th and 19th of July were estimated to have a return period of approximately 100 years in the current climate.

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