Harv's Corner 04/01/2024

Harv's Corner

Here's something we all know.  It's hot!  Records were broken all over the country last year.  This year it's starting even earlier.  This appears to be a blip in a larger pattern of Global Warming but is says the world is edging closer.  THINK . . . who is most likely to address this situation -  Biden or Trump. 

Hot just keeps getting hotter
Study also finds since 1979, heat waves last longer, hurt more people.
By SETH BORENSTEIN Associated Press

Long hot summers affect those who work outside more.  This photo from last summer shows a security guard in Beijing  wearing an electric fan on his neck.

Climate change is making giant heat waves crawl slower across the globe and they are baking more people for a longer time with higher temperatures over larger areas, a new study finds.

Since 1979, global heat waves are moving 20% more slowly — meaning more people stay hot longer — and they are happening 67% more often, according to a study in Friday's Science Advances. The study found the highest temperatures in the heat waves are warmer than 40 years ago.
Studies have shown heat waves worsening before, but this one is more comprehensive and concentrates heavily on not just temperature and area, but how long the high heat lasts and how it travels across continents, said study co-authors and climate scientists Wei Zhang of Utah State University and Gabriel Lau of Princeton University.

From 1979 to 1983, global heat waves would last eight days on average, but by 2016 to 2020 that was up to 12 days, the study said.
Eurasia was especially hit hard with longer lasting heat waves, and heat waves slowed down most in Africa, while North America and Australia saw the biggest increases in overall magnitude, which measures temperature and area.

"This paper sends a clear warning that climate change makes heat waves yet more dangerous in more ways than one," said Lawrence Berkeley National Lab climate scientist Michael Wehner, who wasn't part of the research.

Just like in an oven, the longer the heat lasts, the more something cooks. In this case it's people, the co-authors said.

"Those heat waves are traveling slower and so that basically means that ... there's a heat wave sitting there and those heat waves could stay longer in the region," Zhang said. "And the adverse impacts on our human society would be huge and increasing over the years."

The team conducted computer simulations showing this change was due to heat-trapping emissions that come from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. The study found climate change's fingerprint by simulating a world without greenhouse gas emissions and concluding it could not produce the worsening heat waves observed in the last 45 years.

The study also looks at the changes in weather patterns that propagate heat waves. Atmospheric waves that move weather systems along, such as the jet stream, are weakening, so they are not moving heat waves along as quickly — west to east in most but not all continents, Zhang said.

Several outside scientists praised the big picture way Zhang and colleagues examined heat waves.

​This shows "how heat waves evolve in three dimensions and move regionally and across continents rather than looking at temperatures at individual locations," said Kathy Jacobs, a University of Arizona climate scientist.