"Thousands ordered to flee California wildfire near Yosemite"
Millions of Americans are under heat warnings as the nation braces for record-breaking temperatures and dangerous heat.
Climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels is a global phenomenon that is certainly playing a role in what the US is experiencing, scientists say [Nathan Howard/AP]
Forecasters warn this week’s extreme heat will linger until the weekend on the West Coast. Temperatures could break daily records in Seattle, Portland and northern California by Tuesday and climb to the highest level since a heatwave last year that killed hundreds of people across the Pacific northwest.
Many homes in the often-rainy region lack air conditioning and authorities cautioned that indoor heat is likely to build through the week, increasing the risk of heat-related illnesses, something emergency medical officials in Boston also warned of.
Here is an explanation of what is causing the heatwaves in the US:
What is a heatwave?
A heatwave has no single scientific definition. Depending on the climate of a region, it can be determined by a certain number of days above a specific temperature or percentile of the norm.
The Arctic is warming three to four times faster than the globe as a whole, meaning there is ever less difference between northern temperatures and those closer to the equator.
That is resulting in swings in the North Atlantic jet stream, which in turn lead to extreme weather events like heatwaves and floods, according to Jennifer Francis, senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center.
----- [Insert: The World Is Burning Once Again We can only adapt so much to extreme heat. [...] There is also the possibility, Kornhuber said, that beyond simply warming the planet as a whole, climate change could be changing the way weather systems move around the globe, so as to make concurrent heat waves more likely. Under one hypothesis, the rapid warming of the poles compresses the temperature gradient between the poles and the equator. This, in turn, slows the equatorial jet stream (which you can basically think of as the giant wind highway along which lots of weather travels), causing heat waves to linger longer than they otherwise would. This hypothesis, though, is just that—a hypothesis. Scientists disagree about how much, if at all, this mechanism contributes to the growing prevalence of extreme heat. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=169455929
Sizzling temperatures in store across southwestern US Scorching temperatures are in store for the southwestern U.S. over the next several days [...]Sydney experiences coldest start to winter in 30 years while parts of northern Australia swelter [...]Why the collapse of an Atlantic ocean current could mean La Niña becomes the norm Read more > https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/07/why-the-collapse-of-an-atlantic-ocean-current-could-mean-la-nina-becomes-the-norm [...] Excerpt from extra article in above P - Climate change is slowing down the conveyor belt of ocean currents that brings warm water from the tropics up to the north Atlantic. Our research .. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01380-y , published today in Nature Climate Change, looks at the profound consequences to global climate if this Atlantic conveyor collapses entirely. P - We found the collapse of this system – called the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation – would shift the Earth’s climate to a more La Niña-like state. This would mean more flooding rains over eastern Australia and worse droughts and bushfire seasons over south-west US. P - East-coast Australians know what unrelenting La Niña feels like. Climate change has loaded our atmosphere with moister air, while two summers of La Niña warmed the ocean north of Australia. Both contributed to some of the wettest conditions ever experienced, with record-breaking floods in New South Wales and Queensland. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=169096064
Warmer oceans contribute to heat domes that trap heat over large areas. At the end of this week, the heat dome will stretch from the southern plains of the Oklahoma/Arkansas area all the way to the eastern seaboard, according to the US Weather Prediction Center.
Scientists have found the main cause of heat domes is a strong change in ocean temperatures from west to east in the tropical Pacific Ocean during the preceding winter.
“As prevailing winds move the hot air east, the northern shifts of the jet stream trap the air and move it toward land, where it sinks, resulting in heatwaves,” the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says on its website.
Helicopters and jets on Sunday rushed to drop water while battling the Oak Fire in Mariposa County, California [Noah Berger/AP]
“Climate change is making extreme and unprecedented heat events both more intense and more common, pretty much universally throughout the world,” said Daniel Swain, climate scientist at UCLA.
“Heatwaves are probably the most underestimated type of potential disaster because they routinely kill a lot of people. And we just don’t hear about it because it doesn’t kill them in, to put it bluntly, sufficiently dramatic ways. There aren’t bodies on the street.”
Francis, of the Woodwell Center, said that with climate change, the world is seeing changing wind patterns and weather systems “in ways that make these heatwaves, like we’re seeing right now, more intense, more persistent, and cover areas that just aren’t used to having heatwaves”.
Alex Ruane, researcher at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said as the world warms, “it takes less of a natural anomaly to push us into the extreme heat categories. Because we’re closer to those thresholds, it’s more likely that you’ll get more than one heatwave at the same time. We’re seeing this in the United States.”
Dangerously high temperatures threatened much of the northeast and deep south of the US as millions sought comfort from air-conditioners, fire hydrants, fountains and cooling centres [Seth Wenig/AP]
Which cities are most impacted?
On Sunday, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, hit 37 degrees Celsius (99 Fahrenheit) even before factoring in humidity. Newark, New Jersey, saw its fifth consecutive day of 38 degrees Celsius (100 Fahrenheit) or higher, the longest such streak since records began in 1931. Boston also hit 38 degrees, surpassing the previous daily record high of 37 Celsius (99 Fahrenheit) degrees set in 1933.
Have there been any deaths?
At least two heat-related deaths have been reported in the northeast of the US, with officials warning of the potential for more.
Athletic events were shortened or postponed. Organisers of the New York City Triathlon cut the distances that athletes had to run and bike on Sunday. This weekend’s Boston Triathlon was put off until August 20-21.
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