In June 2021, in the Pacific Northwest, a mass of hot air heated an already hot landscape to a record 49.6°C.. More than 1,000 people have died from overheating, writes Science author Paul Voosen..

Climatologists have tried to figure out how much of the blame for the heat wave can be attributed to global warming. However, their methods didn't work..

“This phenomenon has challenged our climate models and our statistical analysis methods,” says Michael Vener, a climatologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who is involved with the World Weather Attribution (WWA) initiative.. However, the WWA still issued a statement that a heat wave would be virtually impossible" But, admits Vener, doubts were not dispelled.

There have been many attempts to build models to explain the heat wave in 2021, but without much success.. Finally, one team of researchers, led by Oxford University PhD student Nicholas Leach, modeled a heat wave in the Pacific Northwest in 2021 using the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts' world-leading model.. At the same time, they removed the anthropogenic factor from it, in particular, the role of human activity in increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.. And yet the model reproduced a similar heat wave to the real one, except that the maxima were only 2°C or so lower than in the real case..

So the WWA's conclusion that this event was virtually impossible without global warming was probably an exaggeration, Leach says.. “We don't find this in our model,” he says..

The current 2022 is also rich in climate records. This, in particular, is a record heat wave in India and Pakistan in early April.. Temperatures reached 47 degrees. It's also a megadrought in North America. But even here, climatologists do not see the determining influence of the anthropogenic factor.. This is the impact of a global phenomenon in the Pacific - La Nina.

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To prevent catastrophic overheating of the planet, it is necessary to bind the main greenhouse gas - carbon dioxide. Trees do best with this task, which accumulate carbon in their tissues.. What is very important - the border of forests is confidently advancing on the polar tundra. The emergence of new forests will help bind excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, writes Science magazine author Fred Pierce in the article "