Heat waves are driven by weather patterns but occur on the backdrop of a rapidly warming world. Without climate change the current European heat wave would have been ~3.2 °C (5.8 °F) cooler.
Heat impacts are non-linear, so this higher severity can lead to much greater suffering
Europe has been warming at a much faster rate than the world as a whole: roughly twice as fast as the global average, and 40% faster than the global land average.
This warming has been fastest in the winter months – driven in part by greater absorption of sunlight with less winter snow cover – but has been rapid year-round:
But in summer months, we've seen the hottest summer days warming nearly a degree faster than the monthly average temperatures in Western Europe:
The net effect of this is to turn what would have been a severe heatwave in a pre-industrial climate into something truly unprecedented that would have been almost impossible to occur without human-driven warming. worldweatherattribution.org/fossil-fuel-em…
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