Climate scientists warn:

The Earth is on the verge of heat waves that it has never seen before

• The Finnish Arctic Lapland has recorded the highest temperatures in more than a century.

  Father

• Wildfires due to rising temperatures in British Columbia.

  AFP

• Children quench the sweltering heat by bathing in a canal in Sri Gangangar, northern India.

  AFP

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A group of prominent climate scientists have warned that the world needs to ramp up preparations for extreme heat, which could be even tougher and tougher than previously expected, following alarmingly high temperatures recorded in Canada and the United States this year.

Last week, the thermal dome over British Columbia, Canada, Washington state and Portland, Oregon, broke daily temperature records of more than five degrees Celsius (9 Fahrenheit) in some places, a rise that would have been considered impossible two weeks ago, experts say, raising fears that the fluctuations in the Climate has crossed a dangerous threshold.

extreme weather

A preliminary analysis released on Wednesday of this heat wave showed that human-caused climate change has made extreme weather at least 150 times more likely.

Worldwide temperatures are rising as a result of greenhouse gas emissions, and scientists have long expected temperature records to rise at an ever-increasing pace.

The authors of the new study stress that the recent wave of global warming has exceeded even the worst weather scenarios.

That is why they are forced to review their understanding of heat waves and consider the possibility that other parts of the world will experience similar temperature shocks, including the United Kingdom.

"This is really the biggest jump I've ever seen in rising temperatures," says Dr Frederic Otto, associate director of the Oxford University's Institute for Environmental Change, who is co-founder of the World Weather Attribution group, which conducted the latest study. "We should not expect heat waves to behave as they were in the past... and we must prepare for what is to come."

unlucky areas

The main focus now is whether the affected regions are simply unlucky, or whether the climate system has crossed a threshold and entered a new phase in which a small amount of global warming could cause a faster rise in extreme temperatures.

There is still no scientific consensus on this, but researchers are urgently studying whether additional forms of weather disturbances, such as droughts or slowing jet streams, can amplify heat waves.

Until last year, standard climate models assumed an upper bound on heat waves that moved roughly twice as fast as broader warming trends, says second author of the new paper, Gert Jan van Oldenburg of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Meteorology.

“We thought we knew exactly what was going on, and then this heat wave came in which was way above the upper bound, and last year we thought that was impossible, it came as a surprise to all expectations,” Oldenburg says.

"We are now less certain about heat waves than we were two weeks ago, and we are very concerned about the possibility of this happening everywhere, but we don't know yet where that will happen."

Addresses

Recent headlines have focused on the United States and Canada, which set a record 49.6 degrees Celsius at a latitude similar to the United Kingdom.

More than 500 deaths have been linked to the heat, which has also led to wildfires, glacial meltwater floods, power outages, and derailed roads.

The scientists stressed that similar high-temperature trends can be found in many other parts of the world, although they are often not reported, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, which does not have many monitoring stations, and which receives coverage Much less informative.

Recently, parts of Siberia and Pakistan experienced unusually intense heat waves.

The hottest days in the past month were also recorded in Helsinki, Moscow and Estonia.

• The temperature is rising across the world as a result of greenhouse gas emissions, and scientists expected that temperature records would rise at an increasing rate.

• A preliminary analysis of this heat wave, released last Wednesday, showed that human-caused climate change made extreme weather at least 150 times more likely.

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