Scientists cite climate change for hellish July
The fierce July that saw monstrous wildfires, record heat and unprecedented flooding around the globe was fueled by man-made climate change, scientists said – and these extremes are likely to become a fact of life.
“Overall, globally, what we’ve been seeing is exactly what has been predicted for decades,” said Noah Diffenbaugh, a geoscientist at Stanford University. Climate change is “upping the odds that when these heat waves happen that they’re hotter and more severe.”
Record-breaking heat waves and extreme rainfall are likely to become more common because the buildup of greenhouse gases – such as carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, oil and gas – is altering the atmosphere, according to the British journal Nature.
Deadly fires have had California, including Yosemite National Park, under siege the past few weeks. Fires also have scorched Yellowstone, Crater Lake, Sequoia and Grand Canyon national parks, burning an area larger than 325 Manhattan Islands.
Summers of fire have become more common in recent years: The number of large forest fires in the western United States and Alaska has increased since the early 1980s and is projected to
further increase in those regions as the climate changes, according to a report from the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
The number of acres burned in the USA by wildfire has doubled compared with 30 years ago. Last year, more than 10 million acres burned. Over the past five years, an average of 6.7 million acres burned a year.
UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said about half of the increase can be blamed on the extreme warmth fueled by climate change. He said other factors include homes built in high-risk fire areas. “We’ve put a lot of people and a lot of stuff in harm’s way,” Swain said.
The U.S. has not been alone. Tinder-dry conditions and record heat triggered a firestorm in Greece last month, killing more than 90 people.
Heavy rain and floods in July were devastating: Hundreds of people were killed in Japan, India, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos, the Philippines and Sudan.
July has been one of the wettest on record across the eastern USA as days of relentless rain put millions of people at risk of flash flooding.
The deluge isn’t a blip: Extreme one-day rainfall across the nation has increased 80 percent over the past 30 years. Ellicott City, Maryland, for example, had a so-called thousand-year flood in 2016 – and this year.
The heart of hurricane season is around the corner, and scientists issued a dire report about one of last year’s worst disasters: Hurricane Harvey was supercharged by global warming as it dumped 15 percent more rain on Houston than it would have without it.
For many, it’s the heat records that have been the most extraordinary: Northern Finland, above the Arctic Circle, hit 90 degrees; a possible alltime record for Africa of 124 degrees was measured in Algeria; the mercury hit 106 in Japan, an all-time mark during a heat wave that killed dozens; and fierce heat in Canada killed at least 70 people in late June and early July.
Rivers in Germany have soaked up so much heat that fish are beginning to suffocate. Several of Germany’s nucle- ar power stations reduced energy output because rivers used to cool the power plants are too warm.
In the United States, there were 1,782 new daily high-temperature records, 101 new monthly heat records and 29 alltime highs last month, many of which were recorded in Texas, New Mexico and Louisiana, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Notorious hot spot Death Valley, California, set a record in July for hottest month ever measured at a U.S. station with an average temperature of 108 degrees, the Weather Underground reported.
“It’s not rocket science,” Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann said. “You make the Earth hotter, you’re going to have more extreme heat.”