Heatwave that led to Siberian fires blamed on climate change

RECENT record heat in Siberia that contributed to widespread wildfires would have been almost impossible without man-made climate change, scientists have said.

The region has had six months of prolonged heat that was made 600 times more likely as a result of humaninduced climate change, an international team of climate experts said following a rapid analysis.

In June, the town of Verkhoyansk hit a record-breaking 38C, which the scientists said had also been made much more likely as a result of climate change.

The study found that overall the six months between January and June were more than 5C warmer than average.

The heatwave has been linked to widespread wildfires which have led to the release of 56million tons of carbon dioxide from the burning of trees and soils and the thawing of permafrost, more than the entire emissions of Switzerland and Norway.

It has also led to the release of swarms of tree-eating moths, and was a factor in the region’s worst oil spill when a tanker collapse was blamed on melting permafrost.

Andrew Ciavarella, a scientist at the Met Office and one of the lead authors, said the findings were “truly staggering”.

The team of scientists, which also included researchers from Oxford University, used computer modelling to work out what the likelihood of the temperatures would be without human-induced warming of about 1C. They found such temperatures would only happen less than once in every 80,000 years without climate change.

Even with climate change, the heatwave would be expected to occur only once every 130 years. The scientists said the results were among the strongest results of any attribution study conducted to date and “unequivocal evidence of the influence of human-induced climate change on the planet”.

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world because of feedbacks in the climate system which mean that, for instance, as warming temperatures melt snow cover, the ground can no longer reflect the sun’s rays.

That holds an additional threat, as permafrost contains twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere, which is released as it thaws.