![]() ![]() The late-June heat wave in the Pacific Northwest led to hundreds of deaths. Most pressingly, though, heat is a health issue, even when less extreme than the fatal wet-bulb readings. In Washington, sections of the I-5 highway were closed because pavement buckled. In Portland, light rail service shut down because of melting equipment. A recent study found that both Jacobabad and Ras al Khaimah, in the United Arab Emirates, have already had brief periods of reaching that deadly temperature, years ahead of the predictions of climate scientists.Įxtreme heat can not only make demands on power grids that cause them to fail–itself potentially fatal to those dependent on machines for breathing or other health needs–but can also damage infrastructure. Still more significant are temperatures measured with a wet cloth over the thermometer to take account of heat and humidity: a wet-bulb reading of 95F (35C) can be fatal within a few hours, even for fit, healthy humans, because the body can no longer cool itself by sweating. Those numbers are all the usual dry-bulb temperatures and take no account of humidity. In Siberia, north of the Arctic circle, temperatures recently reached 118F (48C) Jacobabad, Pakistan hit 126F (52C). Of course, like other extreme weather events, heat waves have been happening not just in the US but around the globe. Air conditioners or vehicles used to escape the heat also contribute to warming the planet. Heat waves increase the likelihood of forest fires, which endanger watersheds as well as destroying trees that sequester carbon, thus releasing more greenhouse gasses. We are entering an era of tipping points and vicious cycles. As for whether this heat wave is, as at least one report called it, a thousand-year event? Only if you are looking at the past thousand years instead of the next thousand. īut No, this is not the new normal, since the frequency and intensity of extreme weather will continue to increase rather than stabilize any time soon. Moreover, the intensity of heat waves has increased by 3-5 degrees. In major US cities over the past 40 years, the frequency of heat waves has tripled, and their duration increased by over six weeks. While heat waves and other variations in temperature have been part of normal weather, they are now hotter, longer-lasting, and occurring more often. Despite decades of warnings from the National Academy of Sciences, James Hansen, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and other experts, we continue to see increases in use of fossil fuels and emissions of carbon dioxide. Our only planet is now trapping twice as much heat as it did 14 years ago. ![]() Not only were such heat events predicted by climate models, but also scientists have gotten better at linking particular weather events to longer-term climate developments. In case you were wondering–and since reporting may not have made explicit the seemingly obvious connection–Yes, this is an effect of climate change caused by releasing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere through human actions like the burning of fossil fuels. ![]() The heat dome occurs because temperatures in the western Pacific Ocean have risen more in recent decades than in the eastern Pacific, creating pressure differences that cause more warm air to rise over the western Pacific, where the jet stream traps it under a high-pressure dome. ![]()
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