Hyderabad: The heatwaves that caused the deaths of 2,500 people across the states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, in 2015, were a result of climate change caused by humans.
This was the finding in a study on the heat waves that hit India and Pakistan in the months of May to July in 2015. It was carried out by scientists from the Berkeley National Laboratory in California and the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
They concluded that both the heatwaves "were exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change". The conclusion was arrived at after the scientists ran many simulations on computers of "factual" - meaning the real situation of climate - and "counterfactual", meaning how the climate would have been without interference from humans.
They used the Community Atmospheric Model (CAM5.1) developed by the Centre for Atmospheric Research.
During simulations, there was a big human-induced increase in heat index — a measure of how hot it feels due to effect of relative humidity and actual temperature.
