For the first time, scientists have quantified the causal links between worsening heat waves and global warming pollution from individual fossil fuel and cement companies, pushing the boundaries of extreme weather event research in multiple surprising ways.
The new study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, looks at a far more expansive series of heat waves than previous research. It also incorporates the causes of climate change into the calculations.
Instead of looking at one or two localized extreme heat events, the new study encompasses 213 heat waves around the world from 2000 to 2023. It finds, not surprisingly, that heatwaves became much more likely and severe during that period, largely due to the burning of fossil fuels.
Between the first and second decade that the researchers investigated, climate change made the heatwaves climb from being 20 times more likely to 200 times more likely, according to lead author Yann Quilcaille, a climate researcher at ETH Zurich.
Of the extreme heat events the researchers focused on, as many as a quarter of them would have been “virtually impossible” without the climate pollution from any of the 14 biggest “carbon majors” — the largest fossil fuel and cement producers responsible for the lion’s share of the world’s carbon pollution.
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