Heat Waves and Climate Change (AAAS)

 

Heat Waves and Climate Change

 

I grew up in Minneapolis in the 1960s. I cannot remember anyone having air conditioning. Later in the 1990s when I returned to fly emergency medical helicopters everyone was putting in A/C. Today some of my neighbors in the UP of MI are keeping comfortable using mechanical devices courtesy of the scientist and their HVAC installers. While we find a cool abode and car refreshing, A/C may be essential to survival. Of all the current climate hazards, heatwaves kill the most. The contributing scientists at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) via Sci-line explain just how hot it is with implications of how hot it will be if we fail to act.

 

 

“Human-caused global warming has increased the frequency, size, and duration of extreme heat events. What were once very rare events are now becoming more common.

 

Extreme heat is the deadliest form of extreme weather in the United States, causing more deaths than hurricanes and floods combined; more than twice as many deaths as tornadoes; and more than four times as many as from extreme cold. 

 

Heat waves are occurring three times more often than they did in the 1960s—about six per year compared to two per year.  Some recent evidence suggests the increase has been even greater. 

 

Record-breaking hot months are occurring five times more often than would be expected without global warming, suggesting that 80 percent of such monthly heat records are due to human-caused climate change. ⁴ With continued climate change, the frequency of these intense events is likely to increase with particular risks for some important food-producing regions. 

 

Summer nights have warmed at nearly twice the rate of summer days in the United States —a shift that exacerbates health impacts because hot nights reduce the body’s ability to recover from hot days.  The percentage of the U.S. continental land area experiencing abnormally hot nighttime temperatures increased from 5 percent to 40 percent over the four decades between 1970 and 2010.

 

In addition to more extreme heat, humidity is also rising in some regions like the eastern United States. This takes an extra toll on health because humidity interferes with the body’s ability to cool itself through the evaporation of sweat.  A temperature of 90 degrees F with 80 percent humidity feels like 113 degrees F. 

 

Those most vulnerable to heat-related illness and death include young children, the elderly, those with chronic illnesses, student athletes who practice outside, outdoor workers, city dwellers, and those without air conditioning (or who lose it during power outages). 

 

Heat waves are not just more frequent than in the past but on average affect a 25% larger land area in the Northern Hemisphere than they did in 1980; including ocean areas, heat waves grew 50% larger. The Northern Hemisphere-wide string of extreme heat events in the summer of 2018 was the largest ever recorded and a new analysis concluded that it would not have occurred without human-caused global warming. 

 

Recent evidence suggests that climate change is altering atmospheric circulation, such as the jet stream, causing persistent weather patterns to get stuck in place, increasing the duration and damaging effects of heat waves.” 

Warm regards, Cool planet, Vote Climate.

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Questions? E-mail me at climatelynx@earthlink.net

 

The American Association of Science (AAAS) was founded in 1848 and is the largest general science organization in the world. It promotes science and, in the recent anti-science years, has focused on defending scientists. Its world-renowned “Science” magazine is published by the AAAS and distributed to its 120,000 members, of which, I am a proud member.