Siberia´s heatwave `effectively impossible´ without climate change
Siberia's recent heatwave was made 600 times more likely due to human-induced climate change, a study has found. Months of unprecedented warm weather in the normally frigid region of Russia culminated in the hottest June on record, and resulted in numerous wildfires. The average temperature increase for the whole region over the entire month was in excess of 5C (9F). On June 20, Siberia recorded an all-time high temperature of 38C (100F) at the Verkhoyansk monitoring station. Preliminary findings from the study reveal the heatwave would have been 'effectively impossible' without climate change. Scroll down for video A rapid analysis of the heatwave has produced the strongest evidence yet from the World Weather Attribution in attributing extreme events to climate change. The sweltering conditions have been catastrophic, leading to a surge in wildfires which are pumping millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, further amplifying the effect of global warming. It is also melting permafrost permanently frozen ground which caused the collapse of a fuel tank and huge oil spill in May. An international team of researchers ran a series of complex computer models comparing the current atmospheric warming with a theoretical model based on a fictitious world where humans did not burn fossil fuels and set the world ablaze. They examined average temperatures through the six months from January to June over a large region spanning most of Siberia, and also looked at daily maximum temperatures in June in the town of Verkhoyansk. It revealed that this sort of prolonged heat in Siberia would only be expected to naturally occur once every 80,000 years. The study was done in two weeks and has not yet been put through the microscope of peer-review and published in a major scientific journal. World Weather Attribution's past work has found some weather extremes were not triggered by climate change. But 2020's Siberian heatwave stood out, said attribution team co-lead Friederike Otto, acting director of Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute. 'Definitely from everything we have done it's the strongest signal that we have seen,' Otto said. The high temperatures in the Arctic are helping drive 2020 to being one of the hottest years on record. Lead author Andrew Ciavarella, from the Met Office, said: 'Heatwaves and high temperatures occur naturally and human influence has a hand in changing the odds of just how warm they will be when they come along, and also how frequently they come along. 'We found the regional temperatures experienced over the six months to June 2020 have been made at least 600 times more likely to occur as a result of human-induced climate change and would have been effectively impossible without human influences.' He said the probability of the mercury hitting the record 38C (100F) in Verkhoyansk, has also 'likely increased dramatically' because of global warming. However the researchers are less confident of the results for this individual event as they are for the overall trend.