CLIMATEWIRE | A record-breaking heat wave in the western Mediterranean last month would have been nearly impossible without the influence of climate change, new research finds.
The event was an early kick-start to the Northern Hemisphere’s summer disaster season. Temperatures skyrocketed across parts of Portugal, Spain, Morocco and Algeria in the final week of April, reaching levels not typically seen until the peak of summer. These kinds of temperatures are “usually only seen in July and August, so they arrived at least two months earlier than usual,” said Fatima Driouech, a scientist at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Morocco and a co-author of the new study, at a press conference announcing the new findings.
“It was a rare event in the current climate, but an event of this extremity would have been almost impossible in the past colder climate,” said Sjoukje Philip, climate scientist at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and another coauthor of the study. That means world leaders should be preparing for a hotter world, said study co-author Roop Singh, senior climate risk adviser at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre. Extreme heat is one of the deadliest natural disasters worldwide. And it can be even deadlier when it strikes early in the season, as it did last month.
In certain parts of South Asia, April and May are often the hottest times of the year. Even so, this year’s heat wave was one of the most severe in recent history, toppling records across the region.