A study has found that at least 555 extreme weather events were made more likely or severe due to human-caused climate change.
Conducted and published by Carbon Brief, the study also identified multiple cases where extreme weather would have been virtually impossible without human influence on global temperatures.
Almost 750 extreme weather events were analysed, from heatwaves to floods, storms, wildfires and droughts, with 74% of those cases found to have been more likely or severe because of climate change.
More than one third of the weather events linked to climate change were heatwaves. According to the study Spain’s heatwave in April 2023 would have been ‘almost impossible’ without climate change and the intensity and frequency of the 2017 heatwave was made at least 10 times more likely.
This type of study, which falls into the scientific field of ‘extreme weather attribution’ was first accomplished in 2004 by a group of researchers who studied the 2003 European heatwave, a weather event that killed more that 70,000 people across the continent.
The scientists were able to calculate the specific contribution that human-caused climate change made to an individual weather event, and concluded it doubled the risk of such an event occurring.
The infographic, produced by Carbon Brief, maps the extreme weather events studied and illustrates the level of influence climate change had on each event, with red being more severe or likely, yellow representing no influence and grey being inconclusive.
In around 9% of cases, climate change actually lessened the severity of likelihood. These are represented in blue and, unsurprisingly the vast majority were blizzards and cold extremes.
The full report, plus detailed explanations of individual weather events can be viewed on the Carbon Brief website, here.
