The link between our fossil fuel addiction and worsening extreme heat is undeniable

As news breaks that North America’s heatwave was made 150 times more likely by the climate crisis, Daisy Dunne considers the mounting evidence linking worsening extreme weather to fossil fuels

People gather in a ‘cooling centre’ during Portland’s record heatwave (Reuters)

Every heatwave occurring today is made more likely and more intense by human-induced climate change.”

Those are the definitive words of Dr Friederike Otto, associate director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford and one of the world’s foremost extreme weather experts.

Dr Otto is part of a team that today revealed the climate crisis made North America’s recent heatwave 150 times more likely. Without human-caused warming, the record-breaking heat – which has killed hundreds of people across Canada and the western US – would have been “virtually impossible”, the scientists say.