"South Asia’s deadly heatwave in March and April was made 30 times more likely because of climate change, scientists reported Monday.
As April temperatures hit nearly 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in parts of northern India and Pakistan, at least 90 people died from heat-related causes, officials have said. The heatwave, which had delivered record temperatures in India in March, also badly damaged the country’s winter wheat crop.
Without climate change, such heatwaves would be “extraordinarily rare,” according to scientists with World Weather Attribution, an international research collaboration that works to tease out how much climate change plays a role in specific weather events.
Now, with the average temperature having warmed about 1.2 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial average, such heatwaves in South Asia are 30 times more likely to occur. And that frequency is expected to increase as global temperatures continue to rise."
