Climate Change & Extreme Heat Attribution

Understand how scientists link human-caused climate change to the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme heat events.

The top 3

1. Top Global Greenhouse Gas Emitters: In 2024, China, the United States, India, the EU27, Russia, and Indonesia were the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters, collectively accounting for 61.8% of global GHG emissions. China is the largest individual emitter, followed by the U.S. and India.
2. How Extreme Event Attribution Works: Attribution science determines how much human-caused climate change has increased the likelihood or intensity of specific weather events, like heat waves. Scientists use climate models to compare the probability of an event in today's climate versus a simulated world without human-induced emissions. For temperature-related events, the influence of climate change can almost always be measured with high confidence.
3. Global Temperature Anomaly Trends: Global temperature anomaly data, which measures departure from a historical average, shows rapid warming in recent decades, with the last decade being the warmest on record. NASA's GISS analysis, using a 1951-1980 baseline, indicates that the Arctic is warming significantly faster than other regions.

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