How climate change made the heatwave 30 times more likely

THIS year’s heatwave was made around 30 times more likely due to climate change, the Met Office has said.

The scorching summer of 2018 was joint warmest overall with 2006, 2003 and 1976, and the highest temperature was recorded at 36C (97F) in Suffolk.

Analysis from the Met Office says the country now has around a 12 per cent chance of average summer temperatures being as high as they were in 2018 – around 16C (61F) – next year.

Projections last week suggested this would rise to a 50 per cent chance by 2050, making sweltering conditions the norm and heatwave highs of 40C (104F) common.

The latest analysis said there would have been a less than 0.5 per cent chance of such conditions happening in a ‘natural climate’ not affected by greenhouse gases that trap heat on the planet.

Professor Peter Stott, from the Met Office and University of Exeter, said: ‘Our provisional study compared computer models based on today’s climate with those of the natural climate we would have had without human-induced emissions.

‘We find the intensity of this summer’s heatwave is around 30 times more likely than would have been the case without climate change.’

He added: ‘This results from the increase in concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.’

Professor Stephen Belcher, Met Office chief scientist, said: ‘The extreme temperatures experienced in the UK and around the world dur- ing summer 2018 had a significant impact upon many people’s lives.

‘Analysis has shown we live in a climate in which heatwaves will occur much more frequently and, depending on the choices we make around greenhouse gas emissions, we could reach a point in the future when we can expect a hot summer like that of 2018 to occur every year.’

The Met Office is announcing its findings at UN climate talks in Poland, where countries are meeting to finalise how the Paris Agreement on global warming will work.

Greenpeace UK’s executive director John Sauven said: ‘If we stay on the current course, we know the kind of world we’re heading towards – more floods, heatwaves, droughts and rising sea levels.’ He added it was possible to avoid dangerous climate change ‘but only just’, and urged political leaders to take action including replacing fossil fuels with renewables and cutting emissions from homes and cars.

Researchers at the University of East Anglia and the Global Carbon Project said yesterday that global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry have risen by nearly 3 per cent this year to record highs.

At the same time, the Greenland ice sheet is melting at a rate that is ‘off the charts’ due to rising temperatures, contributing to higher sea levels, according to a study by researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US.

It found total ice sheet meltwater runoff had increased by 50 per cent compared with the start of the industrial era, with a 30 per cent rise since the 20th century alone.

The study said that if all the ice in Greenland were to melt, world sea levels would rise by around 30ft.

‘Droughts and rising sea levels’