I have never been much of a fan of the Summer Season and even less now that the Summer months in the UK has become something to endure rather than (sort of ) enjoy but as we bake through the fourth heatwave of the Season and nervously eye a fifth, the obvious question is: ' Are these being caused by Climate Change?'
As i find myself explaining more and more, the changing Climate doesn't create weather, it takes what is already there and ramps it up to 10 so heatwaves have always happened, most famously in 1976 so it takes the weather be it rain, sun, snow, wind and makes it much worse than it would be otherwise.
The question then should be how much worse has Climate Change made this Summers series of heatwaves and worryingly, how much hotter and more dangerous could it get?
Every heatwave today develops in a warmer atmosphere containing far more greenhouse gases than it did previously (1800s: 280 ppm, 1960: 315 ppm, 1976: 332.03 ppm, 2000: 369 ppm, 2026: 427.99ppm) which makes every heatwave today hotter than it would have been without those additional emissions.
MET Office research shows that when they recreated the atmospheric conditions (332 ppm) of the 1976 UK heatwave under today’s climate (428 ppm), temperatures were around 3-4°C higher. The weather pattern was the same but the climate in which it occurred had changed.
Climate change therefore does not create heatwaves, the Weather variability determines whether a heatwave occurs, but greenhouse gases released from burning fossil fuels make heatwaves hotter, rainfall heavier, hurricanes stronger and droughts longer.
That is why Net Zero is so important as burning fossil fuels accounts for around three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions and almost 90% of carbon dioxide emissions and their cumulative emissions have altered the Earth’s energy balance and changed the climate in which every extreme weather event now unfolds.
The bad news is that heatwaves will continue to get hotter until these fossil fuel emissions stop accumulating and as we don't see that happening due to corrupt and ignorant politicians, as someone alarmingly pointed out, the climate we live in today is the least extreme climate you will experience in your lifetime and we will be enduring broken weather records year after year until we do.
Monday, 3 August 2026
Again...Climate Change Does Not Create Weather
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