- Deadly heat during the Hajj is linked to the burning of fossil fuels, says scientist.
- The director of Power Shift Africa says it is a wake-up call.
- Climate change has made heat waves hotter: weather group.
LONDON: The heatwave in Saudi Arabia, blamed for the deaths of 1,300 people during the Hajj pilgrimage this month, has been made worse by climate change, a team of European scientists said on Friday.
Temperatures along the route from 16 to 18 June reached 47 °C (117 °F) at times and exceeded 51.8 °C (121 °F) at the Grand Mosque in Mecca.
The heat would have been about 2.5°C (4.5°F) cooler without the influence of human-caused climate change, according to a weather attribution analysis by ClimaMeter.
ClimaMeter performs rapid assessments of the role of climate change in particular weather events.
Scientists used satellite observations from the past four decades to compare weather patterns from 1979 to 2001 and from 2001 to 2023.
Although dangerous temperatures have been recorded in the desert region for some time, they said that natural variability does not explain the magnitude of this month's heat wave and that climate change has made it more intense.
The assessment also found that similar events occurred in Saudi Arabia in May and July, but now June is experiencing more severe heat waves.
“The deadly heat during this year's Hajj is directly linked to the burning of fossil fuels and has affected the most vulnerable pilgrims,” said Davide Faranda, a scientist at France's National Center for Scientific Research who worked on the ClimaMeter analysis.
Climate change has caused heat waves to be more intense, frequent and long-lasting. Previous findings by scientists from the World Weather Attribution group suggest that, on average, globally, a heat wave is 1.2°C (2.2°F) more intense than in the pre-industrial era.
Medical authorities do not typically attribute deaths to heat, but rather to heat-related coronary or heart disease, aggravated by high temperatures. Still, experts say extreme heat likely played a role in many of the 1,300 deaths during the Hajj.
“Saudi Arabia is one of the world's largest oil producers and often acts to thwart and delay climate action. They must realize that their actions have consequences,” said Mohamed Adow, director of the nonprofit Power Shift Africa. .
Saudi Arabia is the world's second-largest oil producer after the United States, and state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco is the world's largest corporate emitter of greenhouse gases.
It is responsible for more than 4% of the world's historical carbon emissions, according to an emissions database of major carbon companies.
