"Without climate change, we wouldn't see this at all, or it would be so rare that it would be not happening," Friederike Otto, a climatologist at the Imperial College London and the lead researcher of the collaborative group World Weather Attribution.
An international team of researchers collectively organized as World Weather Attribution found in July of 2023 that the record-shattering heat in Europe, parts of North America, and even Greenland would have been virtually impossible without anthropogenic global warming.
The same group reported that the "strong influence of climate change” was also the culprit in the record-shattering heat in the tropics of the Americas in mid-summer (September).
Millions of people in South America were affected by intense heat. At the same time, wildfires blazed across the region "At least 36 fires have been detected in Bolivia (País ED, 2023), 20 in Paraguay (ABC, 2023), and several more throughout Brazil, including in Bahia (The San Diego Union Tribune, 2023; CNN, 2023), Pantanal (O Globo, 2023), and the Amazon (France24, 2023)."
Many in the United States did not feel the searing heat. I know I was one of them. But the heat crisis is a planetary problem. The Climate Agency of the EU found that Earth is on track for the hottest year on record. This is without the full effects of El Nino influencing the weather.
LA PAZ, 3 October – In Bolivia’s highlands, where life's rhythm largely follows the agricultural calendar, a crop emergency is unfolding and pushing families to the brink of hunger, Save the Children said.
One staple is a particular victim - the potato – which is now under threat in the region due to recent erratic weather patterns and changing climate conditions.
For generations, potatoes have been an agricultural lifeline in the high-altitude region of Potosí, Bolivia, where few other plants survive 3,700m above sea level. The hardy crop, first farmed in the South American Andes some 8,000 years ago, is versatile and well suited for the region's rugged terrain.
Over the past few months, Bolivia, like much of South America, has been sweltering under a “heat dome”, causing temperatures in the country to soar to a staggering 45°C (113 F) - unprecedented during the winter. In August, Bolivia recorded the highest winter temperature in the Southern Hemisphere; last week, Save the Children reported that more than half the country was in drought.
South America’s unseasonable heat wave has significantly affected crops such as coffee and has killed at least four people—but likely many more because the full scope of the heat-related deaths will take weeks or months to become clear. It has been just one of the many punishing heat events that have affected tens of millions of people around the world in recent months. Such soaring temperatures have combined to help set several global records this year: July was the hottest month in human history, the three months from June to August were the hottest three-month period, and September was likely the most anomalously warm month (meaning its temperatures were the most above a given month’s long-term average).
A tendency toward more extreme heat events and fewer extreme cold ones is a hallmark of the changing climate as humans continue to burn fossil fuels and add to the heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In parts of South America, the whole winter period was punctuated by intense heat dome events, in which an atmospheric pattern that ushers in extreme heat becomes entrenched. July and August were the hottest such months for the whole continent, and August was the most anomalously warm month on record there. The latter measured a stunning 2.4 degrees C (4.3 degrees F) above average, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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The researchers found climate change made the recent South American event at least 100 times more likely and from 1.4 to 4.3 degrees C (2.5 to 7.7 degrees F) hotter. (There is some uncertainty because of the sparseness of weather records in some of the areas covered by the study.) Such an event would be expected about every 30 years in today’s climate.
But because the world continues to burn fossil fuels, the climate isn’t static. If worldwide average temperatures climb to two degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above the preindustrial period, such an event would be expected to happen every five to six years and would be another 1.1 to 1.6 degrees C (two to 2.9 degrees F) hotter still, the analysis found. The planet has already warmed by about 1.2 degrees C, or 2.2 degrees F, since the preindustrial era.
Argentina
CÓRDOBA.- The rotation of the wind and the heat made this Tuesday a day of uncontrolled fires in the vicinity of Villa Carlos Paz, in the Punilla Valley. In the afternoon it was decided to evacuate families as a precaution; the authorities ordered neighbors of the "Los 400" neighborhood to leave their homes, where almost 1000 firefighters deployed intense activity, supported by hydrant planes and helicopters, to control the advance of the flames.
"The provincial state is going to make up for all the losses they have suffered," said Governor Juan Schiaretti who toured the place. What we have to take care of then is life." He mentioned that "Córdoba is one of the ten places on the planet most exposed to forest fires." When he was in the area, the president had to leave at the request of the firefighters "to leave free space for the pumps."
Brazil
Peru
Mexico
Central America