Global warming continues to threaten Earth, new data show. The West is now affected by hotter summer days, while the East Coast is getting overwhelmed by stickier and hotter summer nights. And that’s not all.
Researchers reveal that state-by-state average temperature trends from 1990 to 2020 unveil the worst-case scenario: temperatures are increasing more and more, especially in some of the regions that just got baked with severe heat over the past week.
Here is what you need to know.
Extreme Heat Consequences
According to a new report, the West is now the fastest-warming area in the US during June, July, and August, up to 3 degrees on average since the 90s.
The Northwest has heated about twice as much in the last three decades as it has in the Southeast. And that includes Oregon and Portland that reached a record 116-degree high, which is 3 degrees warmer than temperatures ever reported in Dallas-Fort Worth or Oklahoma City.
“The ridiculous temperatures in the Pacific Northwest may on one hand be considered a black swan (ultra-rare) event, but on the other hand are totally consistent,” explained Judah Cohen, a meteorologist of the private firm Atmospheric and Environmental Research.
Factors
Climate change is shaping and thinning the jet stream, narrow bands of wind that surround our planet streaming west to east.
Such modifications enable significant weather-generating patterns of high and low pressure to stall in place. For instance, high pressure is hampering more often in the West during summer, triggering dry and hot weather that can lead to heat domes.
On the other hand, low pressure drives to wet weather.
Another factor is higher water temperatures recorded in the Pacific Ocean. They produce many high-pressure ridges in the West. These patterns emerge so often that they can severely wreck Earth.
Extreme heat makes hiding from it even harder. Everywhere we may go is just awful and absurdly hot. More data regarding other regions will be available soon.