A study released this week found that last week’s devastating heatwave that killed hundreds in Oregan, Washington, and Canada would have been “virtually impossible” if not for climate change.

In a  “rapid attribution” study an international team of 27 scientists examined the links between human-induced climate change and the heatwave.

 They found that the blistering temperatures were made at least 150 times more likely to occur because of climate change.

One of the study authors a climate scientist at the University of Oxford told reporters: “Heatwaves [are] how climate change kills us today …Basically, without climate change, this event would not have happened.” The expert said other climate attribution studies are making clear that “heatwaves are increasing in likelihood by orders of magnitude more than any other type of extreme event.”