Thank you for downloading the more or less podcast. We're your weekly guide to the numbers

in the news and in life and I'm Kate Lambel. Recent headlines have been dominated by record

temperatures across Europe, North America and parts of Asia. In the media, thoughts

immediately turn to the climate. As we continue to burn fossil fuels put carbon pollution into

the atmosphere. We're warming the planet. Month after month these records have been broken.

We're seeing extreme weather events around the world linked with climate change.

Now before climate change, the world still experienced heat waves, floods and droughts.

So some scientists focus on whether current events can be linked or attributed to our warming

world. Joyce Kimitai is a climate scientist based in Nairobi and part of the world

weather attribution group. She told me how this work is done. When an event occurs,

we have a team, currently we have a team of climate scientists around the world that will sit

and say, how long was this event? What do we need to understand this event? So we say, what is the

data that is required here? What are the climate models that we need to use here? So we use

observations, climate data observations or weather observations and climate models to compare

the event in the current climate with the event in a climate that there was little or no

anthropogenic influence in the climate system. And when we see a difference, then for sure we can see,

it's to this extent that actually this extreme event has been modified by climate change.

So you're looking at what's happening now and you're looking at this long-term historical data

and comparing the two. You're saying, have we seen this before? How likely were we to see this

event before? And what are we seeing now? Is that right? Yes, that's right. In the case of the

recent temperatures across Europe, North America and China, scientists found the events were made

at least 50 times more likely because of climate change, but making that connection isn't always

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