Extreme ‘heat dome’ hitting Olympics ‘impossible’ without global heating

Scorching temperatures in Mediterranean countries and north Africa already causing increase in premature deaths

The heat dome" causing scorching temperatures across western Europe and north Africa, and boiling athletes and spectators at the Olympic Games in Paris, would have been impossible without human-caused global heating, a rapid analysis has found.

Scientists said the fossil-fuelled climate crisis made temperatures 2.5C to 3.3C hotter. Such an event would not have happened in the world before global heating but is now expected about once a decade, they said. Continued emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide will make them even more frequent, the researchers warned.