Dangerous Heat Waves Are Becoming More Common

Heat Waves on the Rise

Heat waves are becoming increasingly common. Climatologist Deke Arndt explains why climate change exacerbates heat waves —leading to temperatures into the 100s. Officials around the country are issuing warnings. The last 5 years were the hottest ever recorded according to NASA. For decades now, climate experts have warned that climate warming would cause an acceleration to the Earth's water cycle. as the lower atmosphere becomes warmer, evaporation rates will increase, resulting in an increase in the amount of moisture circulating throughout the troposphere (lower atmosphere). An observed consequence of higher water vapor concentrations is the increased frequency of intense precipitation events, mainly over land areas.

During the past few decades, general warming in the atmosphere has accelerated Arctic ice melt, leading to more seasonal ice cover, which is not as white and absorbs more sunlight, in turn causing more warming. The Arctic has warmed twice as fast as the rest of the Northern Hemisphere. This is Arctic Amplification….Scientists have observed that the reduced temperature difference between the North Pole and tropics is associated with slower west-to-east jet stream movement and a greater north-south dip in its path. This pattern causes storms to stall and intensify, rather than move away as they normally used to do. At midlatitudes, more extreme weather results from this new pattern, including droughts, floods, colds spells, and heat waves.

“We are not adapted to living with extremes. It is the clearest kind of physical, mathematical, and logical relationship with the warming world. We don't develop our systems we don't develop our methods of farming or energy distribution to deal with extremes. So, when the climate system starts throwing more and more extremes at US visas the events that are costly in terms of dollars and in terms of lives and quality of life,” states renown Climatologist Deke Arndt.

Brut.