Extreme heatwaves to rise to 32% of days in North America by 2100: researchers

A group of Chinese scientists, whose work was based on the latest analysis, found that extreme heatwave events will increase to 32 percent of the days in North America by the end of the century, and similar events in regions including Asia and Europe will show similar trends.

The findings, published on Friday in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, said greenhouse gases are the main reason for the longterm increase of the surface air temperatures in western North America during the past and into the future, and the chances of extreme events in western North America will increase from 1.2 percent to 32 percent under future Shared Socioeconomic Pathways scenarios during 2021-2100.

Most of the probable increase will be the result of greenhouse gases.

So far this summer, scorching heatwaves in Europe have claimed at least 1,500 lives, according to ABC News. But the extreme heatwaves have not only taken place this year. In 2021, a late June heatwave in the US and Canada also saw temperatures that broke records by several degrees.

Wang Chunzai, leading author and researcher in the Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory and head of the State Key Laboratory of Tropical Oceanography at the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Global Times on Friday that the lab found that the evolution of the heatwave in western North America during late June 2021 was related to anomalous circulations in the North Pacific and Arctic.

“In this paper, we studied the physical processes of internal variability, such as atmospheric circulation patterns, and external forces, such as anthropogenic greenhouse gases,” Wang said.

Wang’s team found that it is likely that global warming associated with greenhouse gases influences atmospheric circulation pattern variabilities, which, in turn, led to a more extreme heatwave event.