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By SETH BORENSTEIN and FRANK JORDANS
Associated Press
Heat waves once again set temperature records across the globe. Europe has suffered from its most deadly forest fires for more than a century and one of the 90 major fires in the United States has burned dozens of homes and forced the 's. evacuation of at least 37,000 people near Redding, California. The flood – inducing floods hit the eastern US this week.
All of this is part of the summer – but all of this is compounded by man-made climate change, scientists say
"Strangeness abounds" Jennifer Francis.
Japan reached 106 degrees on Monday, its hottest temperature ever. Records have fallen in parts of Massachusetts, Maine, Wyoming, Colorado, Oregon, New Mexico and Texas. And then there is craziness in Europe, where normally Norway, Sweden and Finland have all seen temperatures never before seen, exceeding 90 degrees.
So far this month, at least 118 of these heats According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, records have been established or linked across the globe.
Explanations should sound as familiar as the collapse of broken records
"We now have very strong evidence that global warming has already put an inch on the scales, increasing the chances of extreme like severe heat and heavy rainfall, "said Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate researcher from Stanford University." We find that global warming has increased the chances of recording hot events on more than 80 % of the planet, and increased the chances of record wet events by nearly half of the planet. "
Climate change is making the world warmer due to buildup of trapping gas heat from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil and other human activities.And experts say that the jet stream – which dictates the weather in l & # 3 9, northern hemisphere – behaves strangely again.
"An unusually twisted jet stream has been in place for weeks," said Jeff Masters, director of Weather Underground. He says that this allows the heat to stay in place in three areas where the folds are: Europe, Japan and the western United States.
The same jet stream caused the 2003 European heat wave, the 2010 Russian wave and the fires. the drought of Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and the 2016 Canadian wildfires, Michael Mann, climate specialist from the University of Pennsylvania State, pointed out the previous studies conducted by him and others. He said in an email that these extremes were becoming more common because of climate change caused by humans and in particular, the increased warming in the Arctic.
Climatologists have long said that they can not directly connect unique weather events, such as a heat wave, to humans caused climate change without extensive study. In the last decade, they have used observations, statistics and computer simulations to calculate whether global warming increases the likelihood of events.
A study of European scientists revealed Friday that the current European heat wave is twice as likely. global warming, although these conclusions have not yet been confirmed by outside scientists. The World Meteorological Attribution team said it compared thermal measurements and forecasts for the Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland with historical data going back to the early 1900s.
"The world is warming up and heat waves are becoming more and more common," said Friederike Otto, a member of the team and deputy director of the Environmental Change Institute of the University of New York. ; Oxford.
Erich Fischer, extreme weather expert at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Part of the analysis indicates that the authors used well-established methods to draw their conclusions, adding that their estimates could even be rather conservative.
Kim Cobb, climate specialist at Georgia Tech, said the link between climate change and fires was not as much like it's the case with heat waves, but it's getting more clear.
A devastating fire in Greece – with at least 86 deaths – is the deadliest in Europe since 1900, according to the International Disaster Database run by the Center for Research on Cancer. epidemiology of disasters in Brussels, Belgium
In the United States, on Friday, 89 major foci were destroyed. So far this year, fires have burned 4.15 million acres, nearly 14% higher than the average over the past 10 years.
The first major scientific study linking greenhouse gases to stronger and longer heat waves. Entitled "More intense, more frequent and more durable heat waves in the 21st century." The study's author, Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said Friday that "now it reads as a prediction of what is happening and will continue to occur as long as average temperatures continue to rise." This is not a mystery. "
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Borenstein reports from Washington, Jordans from Berlin
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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter: @borenbears.His work may to be found here.
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Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Science Teaching Department of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.The AP is solely responsible for all the
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