Turning Up the Heat: Is This Just a Hot Summer or is it Anthropogenic Climate Change?

July 27, 2018 – It has been hard to ignore the articles appearing in newspapers about record heat in Europe, Japan, the Middle East, India, Pakistan, and elsewhere this summer. Toronto in the first of part of July saw humidex readings of plus 40 running continuously for more than a week, seldom seen if ever here in the past. In neighbouring Quebec, the heat killed 54 in 6 days. In Japan, the heat has hospitalized more than 23,000 people in one week. The summer of 2018 in the Northern Hemisphere is turning into a slow cooker.

And that’s not all. Combined with drier and warmer air weather is turning forests and brush into kindling. In Northern Ontario, not a place you normally associate with hot and dry, wildfires have been burning relentlessly. The same is true in Western Canada, parts of the Northwest Territories, and in the Western United States. Fire season in California is now almost all year round facilitated by periodic droughts and prolonged heat.

In Greece, wildfires have killed scores of people in the last week and driven others to seek shelter in the Aegean Sea to avoid rapidly advancing flames.

In Phoenix, Arizona, on Wednesday, temperatures reached 47 Celsius (116 Fahrenheit) degrees. Now Arizona is hot in the summer and temperatures exceeding 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) are very much the norm. But even Phoenix is calling what the city is experiencing a whole new ball game. At the same time as Phoenix has been frying, Dallas-Forth Worth set temperature records of 42 to 43 Celsius (108 to 109 Fahrenheit) on four consecutive days. In fact, the U.S. this July has seen 41 heat records set across the country.

So where else are we seeing things heat up?

The two Koreas have set heat records in July with temperatures hitting 40 Celsius.

Sweden, Finland, and Norway have seen temperatures above the Arctic Circle hit 32 Celsius (90 Fahrenheit). Temperatures in the United Kingdom have reached what is called a “level three heat-health watch” exceeding 30 Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) for entire weeks in a country used to an average July temperature of 21 Celsius (70 Fahrenheit).

On July 5th, Ouargla, Algeria set the highest temperature ever recorded in Africa, 51.3 Celsius (124 Fahrenheit). In Tbilisi, Georgia a new all-time record high of 40.5 Celsius was hit on July 4th. Yerevan, Armenia on July 2nd hit 42 Celsius, also a record high. And the world’s hottest low nighttime temperature was recorded in Oman, 42.6 Celsius.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which accumulates global temperature readings daily, in the last week, our world recorded 5 high maximum temperatures and 11 high minimum temperatures. Over the last month, there were 55 high maximums and 71 low minimums. And over the past year, 126 high maximums and 246 low minimums.

What are low minimums?

These are the miminum the temperature drops to overnight. Record low minimums means the diurnal temperature swing from daily highs to lows is becoming less. When nighttime temperatures exceed normal minimums it can be an even greater problem than scorching daytime highs. Plants and animals need the cooling off. Humans need the cooler temperatures that night brings. When it doesn’t happen it impacts health. In plants, it goes beyond health affecting their ability to retain moisture. When evapotranspiration is happening both day and night then vegetation dries out and dies. Conditions for fire are the end result.

All of this record heat being reported, both in day and nighttime temperatures, is even more disconcerting because it is happening in a year of a La Nina where mid-Pacific Ocean waters are cooler than the norm. So what will happen with the next El Nino when ocean surface temperatures heat up again?

And speaking of hot air, we have politicians like Donald Trump who are in denial and unraveling the regulations of previous administrations addressing climate change. Trump’s latest assault is an attempt to legislate away California’s environmental regulations on vehicle emissions, the toughest in the country.

Meanwhile, here in Ontario, we have our own mini-Trump, the newly elected Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, who has proclaimed that carbon taxes are anathema, an evil, a burden on the public, a violation of our democratic self-interest, rather than a way to help mitigate climate change. In the name of the people in the last week here in Ontario, our new Progressive Conservative government has introduced legislation to kill the Carbon Cap-and-Trade Program which the province shared with Quebec and California. The reasoning states Ford is to save consumers 4.3 cents per liter at the gas pumps. In addition, this new government has ended renewable energy projects near completion and ripped up previously approved licenses for increasing solar and wind energy. In addition, the government has ended initiatives to encourage consumers to purchase low-emission and zero-emission vehicles in the interest of ending “wasteful” government programs.

But I digress from my initial question reflected in the title of this posting.

Is this just a hot summer or is this the face of climate change and global warming?

This is the same question posed by Joel Achenbach and Angela Fritz of The Washington Post today. In their article, they seek an answer from climatologists. It turns out that the climate models developed over the last thirty years have predicted this summer. Martin Hoerling, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, part of the EPA, is quoted stating “the old records belong to a world that no longer exists” in talking about the new norm in climate. Katharine Hayhoe, Director of the Climate Science Center, Texas Tech University, describes the changing climate conditions stating that in many parts of the country global warming is hitting the “Achilles’ heel.” She points out that the issue of freshwater scarcity in the Southwestern States is being exacerbated by climate change. On the Gulf Coast, it is the intensification and slowing down of cyclonic storms and hurricanes leading to record wind, rain, and flooding. And in the U.S. east, it’s flooding “exacerbating the risks we already face today.”  These two are not voices in the wilderness. Their fellow researchers concur that the weather is today reflecting climate change.

A climate researcher in The Netherlands, Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, describes what happened when temperatures reached 36 Celsius (96 Fahrenheit) in the city of Gouda in the last week. “This…was a 1-in-100 year event in 1900. It’s become 20 times more likely” in the climate world of today. Van Oldenborgh’s office doesn’t have air conditioning because in the past there were few days in the summer that called for it. Now it appears to be a very much needed addition.