EXPERT COMMENT
Explaining the link between heatwaves and climate change, the impacts of extreme heat, and what governments and cities are doing to adapt.
How does climate change contribute to extreme heat? Is it causing more severe and frequent heatwaves?
Every month since June 2023 has seen record-breaking temperatures and the speed at which extreme heat events are being recorded is unprecedented.
Climate change is making heatwaves longer, more extreme and more frequent. Burning fossil fuels releases greenhouse gas emissions - like carbon dioxide - that trap more heat in the atmosphere. The more emissions are produced, the more heat gets trapped, leading to more global warming and increasingly extreme weather events.
Of the 152 extreme-weather attribution studies carried out by scientists around the world over the past 20 years, 93 per cent concluded that human-induced climate change made extreme heat events more likely or more severe.
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