The earth continues to get hotter, and there is an agreement among various climate agencies around the world that July 3-6 will be the four hottest days ever recorded globally. It is done. But while record-breaking temperatures are projected to continue for some time, breaking records is unlikely to please anyone. One of the extreme records is that the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth was 134 degrees Fahrenheit, and he is usually thought to have been recorded at Furnace Creek Ranch in Death Valley in July 1913.
The current heat dome, which stretches across the western and southern United States, could set all-time highs in Phoenix, Las Vegas and California’s Central Valley, with temperatures exceeding 130 degrees Celsius in Death Valley, known as the hottest capital of the world. be. Nighttime minimum temperatures in Death Valley are expected to exceed 100 degrees.
But it’s not just the United States that’s hot Climate scientists and government leaders commented from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ “climate change is out of control” to Carlo Buontempo, head of the Copernicus Climate Change Agency in Europe. ‘We have never seen it before’. This has happened before. He said any chart or graph about the Earth’s climate literally shows that “we are in uncharted territory.”
These temperatures and these statements should concern everyone on the planet. Excessive heat alerts and warnings have affected more than 100 million people in 15 states from Washington to New Mexico, including California, and from Texas to Florida. Florida’s unprecedented ocean temperatures of 94 to 98 degrees Celsius threaten temperature-sensitive corals and other marine life. For comparison, the sea temperature in Santa Cruz on Thursday was 64 degrees.
The entire planet, the atmosphere and the oceans are warming. As the southern United States has been sweltering under a dome of extreme heat for weeks, Texas has escaped rolling blackouts from a separate, aging power grid thanks to solar arrays and wind farms. What do Gulf businesses who moved to Texas to lower taxes think now about the wisdom of that decision?
Canada (not commonly known as a hotspot) experienced the hottest May on record, followed by the hottest June ever, with half the country covered in record heat for the past two months. was broken.
Heat is just a thermometer number, not an inconvenient one. Excessive heat can be life-threatening. Heat stress, the inability to cool the body, is the leading cause of weather-related deaths in Europe. The New York Times reported that the 2022 summer heat wave killed 61,000 people in Europe, according to a study just published in Nature Medicine on July 10.
Most of the dead were women, especially those over the age of 80. Among young people, male mortality was higher. The hottest Mediterranean countries had the highest number of deaths. Italy, Spain and Portugal topped these statistics. The results of this study show that two decades of adaptation efforts in Europe to a hot climate have not kept up with the rate of global warming.
Heat waves are the number one cause of weather-related deaths in the United States, claiming more lives each year than hurricanes, tornadoes and floods combined. 1,577 US deaths in 2021 were due to heat. This is up from his 2018 hers of 1,012. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Nevada and Arizona have the highest number of heat-related deaths.
Maricopa County, Arizona (home to Phoenix and Scottsdale) alone will have 425 heat-related deaths in 2022, a 25% increase from the previous year. By last Wednesday, Phoenix had already experienced 13 days in a row of temperatures above 110 degrees Celsius. Heat-related illnesses will kill 250 people in the Las Vegas metropolitan area in 2022, and the region continues to experience longer and hotter heatwaves. In 2022, Texas recorded 279 heat-related deaths.
Extreme temperatures can damage the central nervous system, brain, and other vital organs, and the effects of heat can occur rapidly, causing heat exhaustion, heat stroke, and heat cramps. Fever can also exacerbate pre-existing medical conditions such as high blood pressure and heart disease.
The elderly, like children, are at high risk and often cannot regulate their body temperature in the same way as adults in extreme conditions. The heat is especially hard on people of all ages who work outdoors, such as farm workers, who make up a large portion of the Central Coast population.
Here in around Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay, we are lucky because we benefit from the mitigating effects of the adjacent offshore oceans. Depending on the time of year, it can be 90 degrees for a few days, and he’s over 100 degrees, but we don’t experience weather and heat like Arizona, Nevada, Texas, or even the Central and Santa Clara Valleys.
The official highest temperature ever recorded in Santa Cruz was September 3, 2017, when the thermometer climbed to 110 degrees Celsius. In August 2020, there were two days when the number reached 107.
This year is likely to be the warmest year on record on Earth, increasing the likelihood of a large El Niño. Various observations and measurements strongly point in this direction. Temperatures in the North Atlantic are already approaching the maximum temperature of the year. Sea ice off Antarctica and in the Arctic has reached record low levels.
What’s frightening is that these heat records have been broken and exceeded observations, even though a massive El Niño event, which usually doesn’t peak until December or January, is predicted to arrive. “Although we are not at this stage, we are experiencing unprecedented extremes these days,” said Claudia Tebaldi, a geoscientist at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. El Niño “makes the possibility of unprecedented events even more likely,” she says.
Ocean heat is expected during El Niño events. El Niño events are characterized by unusually warm sea surface temperatures across the equatorial Pacific.but Shocking warmth has already developed well beyond that zone, the North Pacific, around New Zealand, and most of the Atlantic Ocean. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that in June, marine heatwave conditions covered about 40% of the world’s oceans, the largest area on record.
The science has been clear for decades, and the fossil fuel industry has been well aware of the climate impacts of burning coal, oil and gas. But while profits soared, their denials persisted. And some politicians continue to support junk science, resist efforts to curb the fossil fuel industry, and support greater development of renewable energy that could reverse global climate change over time. are refusing.
But we have only one planet, with only one atmosphere and one big ocean, which we all share. We have extensive chemistry experiments and no shut off switches or reverse gear. We will all feel the effects of a warmer world for some longer than others, some longer than others.
We all have the right to vote too. And the only thing that slows us down the road is to put ourselves in a decision-making position, whether at the local, state, or national level, to accept the dire reality of the situation in which we all find ourselves and move beyond it. It’s about voting people. We are making it clear that this is our number one priority and that we will do our best to resolve and repair it.
Gary Griggs is Distinguished Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He can be reached at griggs@ucsc.edu. For past Ocean Backyard columns, visit https://seymourcenter.ucsc.edu/ouroceanbackyard.
