Climate change has made the heat wave "twice as likely"

The researchers compared the current high temperatures with historical data from seven weather stations located in different parts of Europe

. 19659007] They found that in the heat of this summer the "signal of climate change is unambiguous."

They also say that the magnitude of the heat wave in the Arctic is unprecedented.

The magnitude and width of the current heat Europe has raised many questions about the influence of global warming on extreme events.

To try to see if there is a link, the researchers defined a heat wave as the three hottest consecutive days of the year and examined seven weather stations in Finland, Denmark, in Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

They chose these places because they all had digitized records dating back to the early 1900s, unlike the United Kingdom. The team also used computer models to assess the magnitude of climate change influenced by humans.

The researchers found that in weather stations in the Netherlands, Ireland and Denmark, climate change generally increased by more than double.

Scientists have said that a similar heat wave is likely to occur in a decade or so in southern Scandinavia and Ireland, and in about five years in the Netherlands [19659008] "The logic that climate change is going to make is inevitable," said Dr. Friederike Otto, deputy director of the Environmental Change Institute of Oxford University

"What was once considered an unusually hot weather will become commonplace – in some cases, it already has. "she added.

While acknowledging that the current heat wave in the Arctic is unprecedented in the historical record, the researchers have not been able to clearly resolve the impact of the current heat wave. human influence.

Because summer temperatures vary a lot from one year to the next, the trend was impossible to estimate from the observations, according to the authors.

One question that scientists could not answer was whether climate change was having an impact on keeping the system of prolonged high pressure on Europe. They hope to do so when they will publish a more in-depth analysis of this summer's events in a scientific journal. However, they argue that their initial results should prompt governments to do more.

"We do not take the right steps," said Dr. Robert Vautard, CNRS France

"We are discovering climate change rather than doing something against it."