The heat fell on Mali’s capital like a thick, suffocating blanket, forcing people off the streets and into their homes. For almost a week in early April, temperatures in Bamako remained above 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The price of ice soared to 10 times its normal price, and the overtaxed power grid sputtered to a halt.
Dehydration and heatstroke were widespread as many Muslim-majority countries observed fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. As body temperature rose, people’s blood pressure decreased. Their vision became blurred, their kidneys and livers failed, and their brains began to swell. At the city’s main hospital, doctors recorded a month’s worth of deaths in just four days. Local cemeteries were overwhelmed.
The historic heatwave that hit Mali and other parts of West Africa this month would be “virtually impossible” in the world without human-induced climate change, scientists say, but as global temperatures rise It’s just the latest phenomenon in a sudden and alarming rise in temperatures. . Decades of uncontrolled fossil fuel burning and the El Niño climate pattern that emerged last June have pushed the planet this year past a feared warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. did. Since January 1, approximately 19,000 weather stations have recorded record high temperatures. Each of the past 10 months has been the warmest of its kind.
The size and intensity of this hot zone is unusual, researchers say, even considering the unprecedented amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Scientists are still struggling to explain how Earth was able to beat its previous temperature record by 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) last fall.
What happens in the coming months could indicate whether Earth’s climate has undergone fundamental changes, said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. This is a quantum leap in warming that is confusing climate models and causing more dangerous extreme weather events than ever before. .
But even if the world were to return to a more predictable warming trajectory, Schmidt said it would only be temporary relief from the situation humanity will soon have to face. “Global warming is progressing rapidly.”
Scientists realized that as soon as the Earth entered the El Niño climate pattern (a naturally occurring phenomenon associated with the warming of the Pacific Ocean), it would start breaking records. El Niño events are associated with sudden increases in global temperatures, and this latest El Niño event occurred on a planet that had already warmed by 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
But this El Niño wasn’t just about breaking records. It obliterated them. July was the hottest day on record for four consecutive days. The Northern Hemisphere saw its hottest summer and warmest winter known to science.
By the end of 2023, global average temperatures will be nearly 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the pre-industrial average and about 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than climate modelers expected, even when accounting for El Niño. degree) It was hot. .
Researchers have spent the past few months investigating possible explanations for this 0.2 degree error. These include volcanic eruptions that spew heat-trapping water vapor into the atmosphere, and changes in shipping fuels that affect the formation of clouds that block the sun. So far, these factors have only explained a small portion of the anomalies, raising concerns that scientists’ models are failing to capture long-term changes in the climate system.
“What happens when the statistical connections we base our predictions on are no longer valid?” Schmidt said. “I have a faint feeling in the back of my mind that the past is no longer a guide to the future.”
This possibility has garnered interest in the climate community, prompting multi-part briefers in scientific journals and special subcommittees at academic conferences. But Schmidt says it’s too early to know how much the world should worry. New data from his recently launched NASA satellite could show that changes in ship emissions are actually contributing to further warming. Research may find that the accumulation of seemingly small changes in the atmosphere and oceans is enough to push Earth into such extreme conditions.
The next few months will bring another challenge as the Earth transitions from El Niño to its opposite pattern, La Niña. The National Weather Service predicts it will happen by summer. La Niña events are typically associated with lower global temperatures, so scientists hope La Niña will end Earth’s record heatwave.
Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth and payments company Stripe, said there are hints that something may be going on. Even though last month was the hottest March on record, it beat the previous record by just 0.1 degrees Celsius, not the staggering 0.5 degrees Celsius difference set in September last year.
“We hope to get back to a predictable system,” Hausfather said. “But if we continue to set records, we need to reconsider some of our assumptions, because there may be new persistent forcings that are unaccounted for.”
A whole new kind of weather
Even if global average temperatures return to a more predictable trajectory, the effects of warming on people and ecosystems are already in uncharted territory.
Sea ice around Antarctica shrank to its lowest size in history last year. The mighty Amazon River has reached its lowest level since measurements began. Researchers this week declared a global coral bleaching event – the fourth in history – and warned that the ocean crisis is on the verge of setting records.
Claire Burns, a researcher at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute, said: “The climate is warming so fast that we are now moving beyond the limits of what was previously achievable, not even normal weather. “It’s happening,” he said.
In an analysis published Thursday, Burns and colleagues report that the recent heat wave in West Africa could not have occurred on a cooler, pre-industrial planet. In one city in Mali, the mercury reached 48.5 degrees Celsius (119.3 degrees Fahrenheit), likely the hottest temperature ever reliably recorded in Africa, researchers said.
Temperatures often exceeded 90 degrees at night, providing little relief. Research shows that high temperatures at night are especially dangerous because they hinder the body’s chances of recovery.
Kiswenjida Gigma, a climatologist and consultant at the Burkina Faso-based Red Cross Climate Center who contributed to the new analysis, said she had little sleep during the heatwave. Due to frequent power outages, I was unable to use a fan to cool myself down.
It is said that very few people in this area have access to air conditioning. And the construction in many poor areas, often built with brick or metal roofs that trap heat, further exacerbates the danger.
“We’re used to heat, but we’ve never experienced this level of extremes,” Gigma said. “We will soon reach the very limits of what humanity can actually tolerate.”
This heatwave analysis is just the latest report by World Weather Attribution, a global network of researchers who study the effects of climate change on extreme events, and it is expected that as the world continues to warm, It has become clear that previously unthinkable phenomena are becoming commonplace. Madagascar’s October heatwave, which lasted 10 days of unbearable record heat, “would not have occurred” without human-induced warming, the group said. Heavy rains in Libya caused a catastrophic dam failure, killing thousands of people, but climate change has made it 50 times more likely.
Burns said the West African heatwave may have been unprecedented today. But if the world warms by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), something could happen by mid-century if we don’t act quickly. To tackle climate change. A heat wave of that magnitude is expected to occur every 10 years.
“If we continue to pump carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, it will only get warmer…and the situation will get worse,” Burns said. “Sadly, this is not the new normal. This is on the road to the unknown.”
