Countries with the lowest emissions experienced approximately three to four times more days marked by higher temperatures from June to August than G20 nations, a report published on Thursday said.
The G20, or Group of Twenty, is an intergovernmental forum consisting of 19 of the world’s largest economies and the European Union.
The report by non-governmental organisation Climate Central said that over 3.8 billion people –nearly half of the world population – experienced at least 30 days of significantly warmer temperatures between June and August due to human-caused climate change.
On September 6, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts said that the last three months were the hottest ever.
“The influence of climate change was inequitably distributed throughout the world, with residents of G20 nations exposed, on average during the period, to 17 days of temperatures made at least three times more likely,” a press release by the organisation said. “Meanwhile, residents of the United Nations’ Least Developed countries [47 days] and Small Island Developing States [65 days] were exposed to far more days of three or above on the Climate Shift Index.”
The Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index system, or CSI, quantifies the local influence of climate change on daily temperatures around the world. It has 11 levels – five positive, five negative and one that represents no change. A positive CSI level means that human-caused climate change made an observed or forecasted temperature more likely.
In India, 11 Indian states experienced temperatures at CSI level 3 for at least half of all the days from June to August. These were Kerala, Puducherry, Andaman and Nicobar, Meghalaya, Goa, Karnataka, Mizoram, Manipur, Tripura, Nagaland, and Tamil Nadu.
Andrew Pershing, Climate Central’s vice president for science, said that no one on Earth escaped the influence of global warming during the past three months.
“In every country we could analyse, 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,” Pershing said. “Carbon pollution is clearly responsible for this season’s record-setting heat.”
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