Climate change made 2022 drought ‘at least 20 times likelier’

HUMAN-INDUCED climate change made this summer’s withering drought in the Northern Hemisphere at least 20 times more likely to occur, an international team of scientists said on Wednesday.

The World Weather Attribution service – which calculates how closely linked individual weather events are to global heating – said the drought that gripped Europe, China and North America between June and August was likely to occur once every 20 years at current levels of warming.

Without manmade heating, they said a Northern Hemisphere drought such as the one this summer would only be expected to occur in one out of every 400 years.

“The 2022 summer has shown how human-induced climate change is increasing the risks of agricultural and ecological droughts in densely populated and cultivated regions of the North Hemisphere,” said Sonia Seneviratne, a professor at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, who contributed to the study. AFP