Why is climate change causing "record" extreme heat?

In this era of rapid human-caused climate change, setting new regional and national temperature records during heat waves happens so often that it can sometimes seem commonplace. From time to time, however, the record is broken by a wide margin – often leading to unprecedented impacts as well as alarm over what this may mean for the pace of climate change.

Researchers call it "record" or "record" heat, explains Professor Erich Fischer, a scientist in the field of climate extremes at ETH Zurich and lead author of the latest assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Says Carbon Brief:

"I would define it as a class of record-setting events where the record beats the previous one by a wide margin."

What that margin is depends on the event, he says. (DAISY DUNNE, more at carbonbrief.com)