The heatwave that kept India’s temperatures record-extending in March has grown 30 times more likely due to climate change, researchers reported in a report Monday.
India had hoped to see a record harvest this year from wheat, but the heatwave caused output to be revised downwards.
Excluding climate change, such heatwaves would be “extraordinarily rare,” say scientists from World Weather Attribution, an international collaboration that seeks to determine how strongly climate change plays a role in certain extreme weather events.
The heat wave was, on average, around 1 degree Celsius hotter than a comparable pre-industrial event, the researchers said.
But the present levels of global warming brought about by man-made climate change made these heat waves 30 times more likely.
