The earth is warming up, and no less than 98 percent of the world’s population has been affected by this in recent months. For example, there were prolonged heat waves in North America and catastrophic forest fires in southern Europe, leading to spikes in mortality. July was the hottest month on record and the average temperature in August was 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels.
The report shows that human-made CO2 pollution has increased the risk of higher temperatures by at least two times. “Virtually no one on Earth has escaped the impact of global warming in the past three months,” Andrew Pershing, vice president for science at Climate Central, told Euronews. “In every country we surveyed, including the Southern Hemisphere, where this is the coolest time of year, we saw temperatures that would be difficult – and in some cases almost impossible – without human-induced climate change.”
The research group studies whether climate change makes heat waves more likely. They do this by comparing the measured temperature with simulations that do not include greenhouse gas emissions. This shows that they would not have “occurred without climate change”.
About 6.2 billion people would have experienced at least one day of temperatures this summer that were five times more likely to occur due to climate change.