Global, Asian heat waves in 2016 due purely to climate change: Study

MIAMI, Dec 14 : Last year's global heat record, extreme heat in Asia and unusually warm waters off the coast of Alaska happened purely because the planet is getting warmer due to human activities like burning fossil fuels, a study said Wednesday.
The findings mark the first time that global scientists have identified severe weather that could not have happened without climate change, said the peer-reviewed report titled "Explaining Extreme Events in 2016 from a Climate Perspective."
Until now, the contribution of human-driven climate change has been understood to raise the odds of certain floods, droughts, storms and heat waves -- but not serve as the sole cause.
"This report marks a fundamental change," said Jeff Rosenfeld, editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, which published the peer-reviewed report.
"For years scientists have known humans are changing the risk of some extremes. But finding multiple extreme events that weren't even possible without human influence makes clear that we're experiencing new weather, because we've made a new climate."
The report included 27 peer-reviewed analyses of extreme weather across five continents and two oceans.
A total of 116 scientists from 18 countries took part, incorporating historical observations and model simulations to determine the role of climate change in nearly two dozen extreme events.
- Records shattered -
In 2016, the planet reached a new high for global heat, making it the warmest year in modern times.
These record average surface temperatures worldwide were "only possible due to substantial centennial-scale anthropogenic warming," said the report.
Asia also experienced stifling heat, with India suffering a major heat wave that killed 580 people from March to May.
Thailand set a new record for energy consumption as people turned on air conditioners en masse to cool off.
Even though the tropical Pacific Ocean warming trend of El Nino was pronounced in 2015 and the first part of 2016, researchers concluded that it was not to blame.    -AFP