Almost 48% of the world's population, about 3.8 billion people, experienced warmer-than-normal temperatures between June and August this year due to human-induced climate change, reported Climate Central.
The report said that people experienced at least 30 days of warmer-than-normal temperatures during June to August.
General heat levels as per the Climate Shift Index (CSI) are three times higher and persisted for at least half the June-August period in 79 countries, including in Central America, the Caribbean, the Arabian Peninsula, and parts of Africa.
Climate Shift Index (CSI) levels indicate how much climate change has altered the frequency of daily temperatures at a particular location.
Between June and August, nearly 2.4 billion people across 41 countries or territories were exposed to more than 60 days of CSI level-5 temperatures. A CSI level-5 indicates these conditions were extremely unlikely without human-caused climate change.
“Virtually no one on Earth escaped the influence of global warming during the past three months,” said Dr. Andrew Pershing, Climate Central’s vice president for science.
“In every country we could analyze, including the southern hemisphere where this is the coolest time of year, we saw temperatures that would be difficult–and in some cases nearly impossible without human-caused climate change. Carbon pollution is clearly responsible for this season’s record-setting heat,” said Pershing.
Impact In India
Kerala, Puducherry, and the Andaman and Nicobar union territory experienced more than 60 days at CSI level 3 or higher:
Eleven Indian states experienced temperatures of 1°C or more above the long-term (1991-2020) average.
The report said that this summer has been the hottest in the northern hemisphere in recorded history and that this was impossible without the influence of carbon pollution.
“Approximately 7.95 billion people–98 percent of the entire human population–experienced temperatures that were made at least two times more likely by heat-trapping carbon pollution in Earth’s atmosphere during the hottest boreal summer in recorded history,” the report said.
During this period, 6.2 billion people experienced at least one day's average temperature that had been made at least five times more likely by climate change–the maximum value calculable by the Climate Shift Index, Climate Central’s global attribution system.
The Climate Shift Index compares observed or forecast temperatures to those generated by models that remove human-caused climate change's influence.