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The historic heat wave that besieged Mali and other parts of West Africa this month — which scientists say would have been “virtually impossible” in a world without human-caused climate change — is just the latest manifestation of a sudden and worrying surge in global temperatures.

As soon as the planet entered an El Niño climate pattern — a naturally occurring phenomenon associated with warming in the Pacific Ocean — scientists knew it would start breaking records.

Researchers have spent the past several months investigating possible explanations for that 0.2 C discrepancy: a volcanic eruption that spewed heat-trapping water vapor into the atmosphere, changes in shipping fuel that affected the formation of clouds that block the sun.

So far, those factors can only account for a small fraction of the anomaly, raising fears that scientists’ models may have failed to capture a longer-lasting change in the climate system.

Another test will come over the next few months, as the planet shifts out of an El Niño and into its opposite pattern, La Niña — something that the National Weather Service predicts will happen by the summer.

In the analysis published Thursday, Barnes and her colleagues reported that the recent heat wave in West Africa could not have occurred on a cooler, preindustrial planet.

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