The Heat is On

Leave it to the British newspaper the Guardian to speak truths about the American experience we're not facing:

"The heatwave that has recently swept the US has put 100 million Americans under heat warnings; caused power cuts in California where temperatures in places such as Palm Springs approached 50C (122F); and resulted in deaths from New York to the Mexican border, where people smugglers abandoned their clients in the desert. Further north, in Canada, more than 70 people perished in the Montreal area after a record burst of heat.

Climate change is spurring increasingly punishing heatwaves that are projected to cause tens of thousands of deaths in major US cities in the coming decades.

Heat already kills more Americans than floods, hurricanes or other ecological disasters. That puts sweltering cities like Phoenix – where flights were cancelled last year because it was simply too hot – under growing pressure. But heat is rapidly becoming a national problem.

Recent research suggests warming conditions are leading to suicides, as rising nighttime temperatures deprive Americans of sleep and respite from scorching days. A new study, released last week, predicts that a warming climate will drive thousands to emergency rooms for heat illness. The very hottest days experienced in the US could be a further 15F warmer this century if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t curbed."

A Forbes Magazine article adds:
A recent Australian study projected a five-fold increase in mortality from extreme heat for the United States by 2080. For less wealthy countries the situation will be much worse – the researchers projected 12 times more deaths in the Philippines over the same time period."

There is no national plan to deal with the causes, but there is also no national plan to deal with the effects of the climate crisis, including the threats of heat.

The crisis, says these researchers, is becoming national.  It's not just Phoenix, where heat is expected:

"Research published by Wellenius and colleagues last year found the burden of these deaths is shouldered by unlikely places, far from the parched cacti and canyons of the west. The relatively cooler eastern cities of Philadelphia and Baltimore jointly have the most excess deaths due to heat in the entire US, at 37 fatalities per million people each year, the research found. July temperatures in Baltimore and Philadelphia have a long-term average of around 25C; in Phoenix it’s 34C. In all three cities, as elsewhere on the planet, the average is climbing."

Just this week, at least 4 people died in a Philadelphia heat wave.

We're just not used to considering excessive heat as anything other than a temporary inconvenience: something to endure and complain about.  But hotter heat for longer and in more frequent bunches creates a systemic crisis.  Cities like Philadelphia are not designed to protect themselves against heat.  And even cities like Phoenix rely too much on air conditioning, when excessive heat waves fry wires and excessive electrical use shuts down the grid.

Eventually America is facing a future in which highly populated areas will no longer be fit for human habitation, not only from sea level rise but from heat and its effects.

In other places, and in the meantime, attention needs to be paid to addressing the heat rather than ignoring or denying it.

There's no longer any time to waste, especially as the greenhouse heat may be about to meet "internal factors" that forecasters say means the heat is on:

"The past four years have been the four warmest ever recorded — and now, according to a new scientific forecast, the next five will also probably be “anomalously warm,” even beyond what the steady increase in global warming would produce on its own.

That could include another record warmest year, even warmer than the current record year of 2016. It could also include an increased risk of heat extremes and a major heat event somewhere in the Earth’s oceans, of the sort that has triggered recent die-offs of coral reefs across the tropics."

This Washington Post story provides the details: The study finds a 58 percent chance that Earth’s overall temperature from 2018 through 2022 will be anomalously warm based on these factors, and a 69 percent chance that Earth’s oceans will be. This includes, for Earth’s oceans, “a dramatic increase of up to 400% for an extreme warm event likelihood” during 2018 to 2022, the study reports.

As bad as that might be on the land, the effect in the oceans could be catastrophic, especially as ocean temperatures continue to rise.  Southern CA has recorded its highest sea surface temperature ever.

Not everybody is ready to agree with the conclusions of this one study. If it is a more or less accurate forecast, it only adds to the heating trend.  Climate scientists are also watching the likely formation of an El Nino this fall or winter, which could add to rising global temperatures.  The last El Nino in 2016 set the high temp record, but 2017 also set a record for the hottest year that didn't have an El Nino.

Global temperature usually means the atmosphere.  Down here on Earth it remains a very hot summer.  Friday's Washington Post (which includes maps and charts of this summer's surface heat):

"Even with the peak of summer having passed, several locations in western North America notched their highest temperatures on record last week. They included Calgary in western Canada and Glacier National Park in Montana, where the temperature touched the century mark for the first time in 70 years of records.

A weather station in Idaho soared to a torrid 119 degrees (48.3 Celsius) last week. While it requires verification, it would mark the state’s highest temperature ever measured."

 This is all within the long term context of increasing heating built in, because of the time lag effect of increased CO2 from past emissions affecting the upper atmosphere.  America has had decades to both avoid greater global heating and to better prepare for its effects.  Now the wolf has finally come.