WORLD -ATTRIBUTION- WEATHER : STUDY

This year's startling heat wave across much of Siberia would have been all but impossible without climate change influenced by humans, researchers have concluded.

The scientists looked at two-recent examples of exceptional heating at Siberia, one long-term and the other more brief. The first was the overall rise in temperature across the region from January to June, which was more than none degrees Fahrenheit above average temperatures, recorded between 1951 and 1980.

The second was the astonishing spike on June 20 that put temperatures at the Russian town of  Verkhoyansk at a reported 100.4 degrees, which the Russian Meteorological Service said is a record for temperatures anywhere north of the Arctic Circle.

In their analysis, the scientists said climate change had made the prolonged heat event 600 times as likely to occur as it would have been without climate change.

In a statement Andrew Ciavarella, the lead author of the research and senior detection and attribution scientist at the Met Office, the national meteorological service for Britain, called the result ''truly staggering''.

For all practical purposes, said Friederike Otto, acting director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford and an author of the paper, ''you would not have gotten an event like this without climate change.''

In a world without climate change, the prolonged Siberian heat would occur less than once every  80,000 years, ''which is not anything you reckon with or are expecting to see in anyone's lifetime,'' Dr. Otto said. Even under climate conditions, such prolonged warming could be expected to recur less than once every 120 years.

The research conducted by scientists from universities and government meteorological agencies in Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland and Britain, employs the techniques of the emerging field of rapid attribution science, which involves, computer models and rich troves of data to determine how much of the weather phenomenon may have been caused by human activities that have generated planet-warming greenhouse gases.

The scientific initiative known as World Weather Attribution, has found human fingerprints on disasters like Australia's brush fires and the drenching rainfall from Hurricane Harvey.

The Siberia research has not yet been submitted for peer review.

The Honor and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Climate Change, continues. The World Students Society thanks author John Schwartz.