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Human-caused global warming has made this summer’s severe drought in Europe, North America and China at least 20 times more likely than it was more than a century ago, scientists said Wednesday. This is the latest evidence of how climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels is endangering food, water and electricity supplies.
The main driver of this year’s drought has been high temperatures across much of the northern hemisphere, researchers report in a new study. Such high average temperatures over such a large area are “nearly impossible” without the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, the scientists said.
Scientists have found that in the northern hemisphere, north of the tropics, soil conditions as dry as this summer now have about a 1 in 20 chance of occurring each year. Global warming increases that likelihood, they say.
Maarten van Alster, director of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Climate Centre and one of the 21 researchers preparing for climate change, said: “According to science, in many of these Fingerprints.” A new study as part of the World Weather Attribution Initiative, a research collaboration specializing in rapid analysis of extreme weather events.
A couple stand on an old packhorse bridge as record heat hits the low waters of Baitings Reservoir in Yorkshire on August 12, 2022 in Riponden, England. (AP/File)
Severe summer droughts that can destroy crops, cripple river commerce and limit hydropower generation are a huge problem in themselves.However, global food and energy prices have already risen this year for other reasons, including the war in Russia Ukraine.
It is estimated that the record heat that swept across Europe from May could kill 11,000 people in France and 8,000 in Germany. Across the EU, the total area burned by summer wildfires is more than double the average of the past 15 years.
China experienced its harshest summer since modern records began in 1961, reducing hydropower output in the manufacturing-intensive south, according to the China Meteorological Service. To keep production lines running at auto and electronics factories, China has burned more coal, increasing its contribution to global warming.
In the U.S., nearly half of the 48 states experienced moderate to extreme droughts this summer, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Author Raymond Bell. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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