Climate change is driving 2022 extreme heat and flooding

With heatwaves, it's highly probable that climate change is making things worse

Extreme weather events — from scorching heatwaves to unusually heavy downpours — have caused widespread upheaval across the globe this year, with thousands of people killed and millions more displaced.

In the last three months, monsoon rains unleashed disastrous flooding in Bangladesh, and brutal heatwaves seared parts of South Asia and Europe. Meanwhile, prolonged drought has left millions on the brink of famine in East Africa.

Much of this, scientists say, is what's expected from climate change.

On Tuesday, a team of climate scientists published a study in the journal Environmental Research: Climate. The researchers scrutinised the role climate change has played in individual weather events over the past two decades.

The findings confirm warnings of how global warming will change our world — and also make clear what information is missing.

For heatwaves and extreme rainfall, "we find we have a much better understanding of how the intensity of these events is changing due to climate change," said study co-author Luke Harrington, a climate scientist at Victoria University of Wellington.

Less understood, however, is how climate change influences wildfires and drought.