The extreme heat is exceeding the limits of human tolerance

Events that were once unimaginable are becoming common as the Earth's temperature continues to rise, surpassing even experts' predictions.

The heat descended, covering Mali's capital like a thick, suffocating blanket. For nearly a week in early April, temperatures in Bamako hovered above 43 degrees Celsius. Ice prices skyrocketed 10 times normal, and the power grid was disrupted and stopped working.

With most Muslim-majority countries fasting during Ramadan, dehydration and heat strokes have become 'epidemic'.

As body temperature increases, people's blood pressure drops. Their vision blurs, their kidneys and liver have problems, and their brains begin to swell. At the city's main hospital, doctors recorded nearly as many deaths in four days as in a month. Local cemeteries are overloaded, according to the Washington Post.

The historic heat wave that besieged Mali and several other areas in West Africa this month is something that scientists say is "almost impossible" if the world does not confront human-caused climate change. go out.

It is said to be the latest manifestation of a sudden and worrying rise in global temperatures.

Abnormal

Fueled by decades of uncontrolled burning of fossil fuels and the El Niño climate pattern that emerged in June 2023, the planet this year exceeded the worrying temperature threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above average. pre-industrial period .

Each of the past 10 months has been the hottest month. (Photo: Bloomberg).

Nearly 19,000 weather stations recorded record high temperatures since January 1. Each of the past 10 months has been the hottest month.

The scale and intensity of this heatwave are unusual even considering the unprecedented amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, researchers said .

Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said what happens in the next few months could tell us whether Earth's climate will undergo a fundamental change.

It could be a quantum jump in warming, disturbing climate models and causing ever more dangerous extreme weather.

Mysterious heat wave

As soon as the world entered the El Niño climate pattern, scientists knew it would start breaking temperature records.

However, not only did it break records, it even wiped them out.

4 consecutive days in July 2023 became the hottest days in history. The Northern Hemisphere has seen the warmest summer and then the warmest winter known to science.

By the end of 2023, Earth's average temperature will be nearly 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial average. Temperatures were also about 0.2 degrees Celsius hotter than climate modelers predicted, even when accounting for the impact of El Niño.

Nearly 19,000 weather stations recorded record high temperatures since January 1. (Photo: Bloomberg).

Researchers have spent the past several months searching for an explanation for this 0.2 degree Celsius difference. It could be due to a volcanic eruption spewing heat-trapping steam into the atmosphere, or a change in fuel transport influencing the formation of clouds that obscure the Sun.

However, to date, those factors can explain only a small portion of the anomaly. This raises concerns that scientists' models may not fully capture long-term changes in the climate system.

'What if the statistical connections we rely on for prediction are no longer valid?' , Schmidt said. 'In the back of my mind I kept wondering that maybe the past was no longer a guide to the future.'

Another test will take place in the next few months, when the planet shifts from El Niño to the opposite pattern, La Niña. The US National Weather Service predicts it will happen in the summer.

Because La Niña is often associated with cooler global temperatures, scientists hope it will end Earth's record hot streak.

Completely new weather type

Even as average global temperatures return to a more predictable trajectory, the impacts of warming on people and ecosystems reach uncharted territory.

The area of ​​sea ice around Antarctica has dropped to a record low in 2023.

The water level of the Amazon River also dropped to its lowest level since measurement began.

Researchers this week announced a global coral bleaching event and warned that the crisis in the oceans is on track to set a record.

Events that were once unimaginable are becoming common as the world warms. (Photo: Esa Alexander/Sunday Times).

In one city in Mali, researchers said the mercury reached 48.5 degrees Celsius - possibly the hottest temperature ever recorded in Africa.

Nights don't make the weather any more pleasant either, with temperatures often above 32 degrees Celsius. High temperatures at night are especially dangerous because they don't give the body time to recover.

Kiswendsida Guigma, a climate scientist and advisor to the Burkina Faso-based Red Cross Climate Center, said he barely slept during the heatwave. Frequent power outages left him unable to even use a fan.

He added that very few people in the area can use air conditioning. The architecture of poor neighborhoods - where buildings are often constructed with heat-retaining bricks and metal roofs - exacerbates the danger.

'We are used to the heat but we have never experienced this level of extremes ,' Guigma said. 'We will soon reach the brink, the limit of what humans can endure.'

The above heat wave analysis is the latest report from World Weather Attribution. It shows that previously unimaginable events are becoming common as the world warms.

The group also said the extreme heatwave in October 2023 in Madagascar - where record temperatures lasted for 10 days - 'would not have happened' without human-caused warming.

Heavy rainfall in Libya contributed to the catastrophic dam failure that killed thousands of people, which was made 50 times more likely due to climate change.

Clair Barnes, a researcher at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, shared that the heat wave in West Africa is unprecedented. But if the world warms to 2 degrees Celsius, heat waves of that intensity will occur every 10 years.

'If we continue to release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the world will continue to warm. and this will continue to get worse,' said Clair Barnes. 'The sad truth is this is not the new normal. This is the road to the unpredictable.'