How climate change drives extreme weather in Europe

BRUSSELS • Europe is in the grip of a record-breaking heatwave and wildfires are raging across the Mediterranean.

Here's how climate change drives these events.

Climate change makes heatwaves hotter and more frequent. This is the case for most land regions and has been confirmed by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities have heated the planet by about 1.2 deg C since pre-industrial times. That warmer baseline means higher temperatures can be reached during extreme heat events.

A study in the journal Nature this month found that heatwaves in Europe have increased three to four times faster than in other northern mid-latitudes such as the United States.

The authors linked this to changes in the jet stream - a fast west-to-east air current in the northern hemisphere.

"On average on land, heat extremes that would have happened once every 10 years without human influence on the climate are now three times more frequent," said ETH Zurich climate scientist Sonia Seneviratne.

Temperatures will only cease rising if humans stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

Until then, heatwaves are set to worsen. A failure to tackle climate change would see heat extremes escalate even more dangerously.

Countries agreed under the global 2015 Paris Agreement to cut emissions fast enough to limit global warming to 2 deg C and aim for 1.5 deg C, to avoid its most dangerous impacts.

But current policies would not cut emissions fast enough to meet either goal.

Climate change increases hot and dry conditions that help fires spread faster, burn longer and rage more intensely.

Last year, more than half a million hectares burned in the European Union, making it the bloc's second-worst forest fire season on record after 2017.

"The hotter, drier conditions right now, it just makes (things) far more dangerous," Copernicus senior scientist Mark Parrington said.

Forest management and ignition sources are also important factors.

In Europe, more than nine out of 10 fires are ignited by human activities like arson, disposable barbecues, electricity lines or littered glass, according to EU data.

Countries, including Spain, face the challenge of shrinking populations in rural areas, as people move to cities, leaving smaller workforces to clear vegetation and avoid "fuel" for forest fires building up. Some actions can help to limit severe blazes, such as setting controlled fires that mimic the low-intensity fires in natural ecosystem cycles, or introducing gaps within forests to stop blazes rapidly spreading over large areas.

But scientists concur that without steep cuts to the greenhouse gases causing climate change, heatwaves, wildfires, flooding and drought will significantly worsen.

REUTERS