Global warming blamed for last year’s boiling heat in Japan

May 23, 2019

Tokyo--Japan's extreme heat wave last July was caused by the impact of global warming, a research team said Wednesday.

An article about the team's research was published in a journal of the Meteorological Society of Japan.

The team of researchers from the National Institute for Environmental Studies, the University of Tokyo and the Meteorological Research Institute conducted numerous computer simulations using past weather data.

As a result, the team estimated the possibility of air temperatures above Japan exceeding those in last July at 20 pct. Meanwhile, such possibility would be almost zero if the effects of global warming are excluded, according to the team.

Last summer's boiling heat came partly because a Tibetan high-pressure system appeared above a Pacific high-pressure system.

The team said that the possibility of fierce heat hitting Japan would be 24.6 pct if this high-pressure system structure occurs, against 12.2 pct in case no such phenomenon happens.

The Paris Agreement, an international framework to combat global warning, which entered into force in 2016, calls on all signatories, including Japan, to take measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a bid to limit global temperature rises from pre-Industrial Revolution levels to less than 2 degrees Celsius on average. Jiji Press