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By Coco Liu and Eric Roston
One quarter of more
than 200 heat waves that occurred worldwide this
century may have been impossible without
human-induced global warming. Emissions from the
world’s largest fossil fuel and cement companies
played a significant role in worsening those
events, according to a paper
published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The study is the
first to assess the historic impact of climate
change on a large series of heat waves. The
scientists concluded that emissions from the
world’s 180 largest carbon emitters contributed
to about half of the increase in intensity of
heat waves since preindustrial times. They
further determined that 14 of the largest carbon
majors, including Exxon Mobil Corp., Saudi
Aramco and Gazprom PJSC, played a role in more
than 50 heat waves that otherwise would have
been almost impossible.
While past studies
have mostly looked at emissions from regions and
countries, this review focuses on major carbon
emitters, said Yann Quilcaille,
the report’s lead author and a postdoctoral
researcher at ETH Zurich.
“This research is
an important step towards accountability,” says
Friederike Otto, a professor in climate science
at the Imperial College London who wasn’t
involved in the study.
Residents
watch a wildfire burning during a heat wave in
Castrillo de Cabrera, northwestern Spain, on
Aug. 16. Photographer: Cesar
Manso/AFP/Getty Images
Otto is co-founder
of World
Weather Attribution, a scientific group
that pioneered extreme event analysis and whose
approach is adopted by the authors of the new
study. The latest findings come as the number of
climate lawsuits against polluters has surged in recent
years, while citizens, communities and states
seeking justice have often struggled to prove
their case in court.
To help bridge the
knowledge gap, scientists are stepping up their
efforts to use climate attribution research to
examine a wider range of extreme weather events
and connect them to specific actors. Earlier
this year, a study published in Nature
found that Saudi Aramco and Gazprom were each responsible for about
$2 trillion of lost global economic growth
from extreme heat.
Saudi Aramco
declined to comment, while Gazprom and Exxon
Mobil haven’t responded to requests for comment.
A growing body of
scientific evidence is “opening the door to hold
fossil fuel companies responsible” for the harm
that their businesses have caused to communities
and ecosystems worldwide, Otto said.
An Exxon
Mobil Corp. refinery at the Port of Rotterdam
in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Photographer:
Peter Boer/Bloomberg
In an accompanying
essay published in Nature, Karsten
Haustein, a Leipzig University climate scientist
not involved in the study, wrote that it “is
another reminder that denial and anti-science rhetoric
won’t make climate liability go away, nor will
it reduce the ever-increasing risk to life from
heat waves across our planet.”
While heat waves
are still considered a natural weather
phenomenon, greenhouse gas pollution is making
them worse and more frequent. The added heat
over time worsens wildfires, droughts,
hurricanes and rainfall. Sizzling temperatures
also can damage infrastructure,
wreak havoc on
productivity and increase the health
hazards for people. In 2022, heat waves
caused more than 60,000 premature deaths
across Europe.
To calculate how
climate change affects the likelihood and
intensity of heat waves, the study’s authors
analyzed 213 heat waves between 2000 and 2023
that caused significant social and economic
disruptions. As WWA does in their analyses of
individual events, the researchers used computer
models to simulate how the heat waves would have
unfolded under a preindustrial climate, compared
with current times.
Their findings show
that global warming has made heat waves more
likely and more intense, and the situation has
worsened over time. To be more specific, the
heat waves became 20 times more likely between
2000 and 2009, compared with the preindustrial
period between 1850 and 1900, and as much as 200
times more likely between 2010 and 2019.
For more
details on the researchers’ analysis, read
the full story on Bloomberg.com.
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