During a heat wave in Portland, Oregon, a couple and their dog lay in the shade. Monday, June 28, 2021. Photo Credit: Maranie Staab/Bloomberg via Getty Images
When researchers released a rapid climate attribution study on Wednesday, they stated that the high temperature in late June caused hundreds of deaths in Oregon, Washington and Canada. It is so unusual that if there is no artificially induced global warming, they It can't happen. A heat wave in the Pacific Northwest.
The temperature is so different from the chart that scientists believe that global warming may trigger a "non-linear" climate response, which may involve droughts to amplify warming, and thus brew extreme heat storms that exceed climate predictions.
The World Weather Attribution study concluded that climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions increased the likelihood of heat waves in the Pacific Northwest by at least 150 times and increased its peak temperature by approximately 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
"I think this is the biggest jump in the record I have seen so far," said Fredi Otto, a climate researcher at the University of Oxford and co-author of the study. "We have seen temperature jumps in other heat waves, such as in Europe, but it has never been this big."
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Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, co-author of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, said extreme temperature peaks have shaken some basic assumptions about heat waves.
"This is far beyond the upper limit," he said. "It is surprising that our theoretical understanding of heat wave behavior is so roughly broken, which shocked me. We have reduced our certainty."
He added that if global warming causes the climate to exceed the heat wave tipping point, "we are worried that these things are everywhere."
Dim Coumou, co-author with the VU Environmental Institute in Amsterdam and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, said the heat wave in the Pacific Northwest should be a major warning. It shows that climate scientists do not understand the mechanism that causes such abnormally high temperatures, which indicates that “we may have crossed the threshold of the climate system, and a small amount of additional global warming will cause extreme temperatures to rise faster.”
In an unrelated study published on July 6, EU researchers studying climate tipping points found additional evidence that man-made warming may be "sudden and irreversible", partly due to the current rate of warming Too fast, the climate system cannot be adjusted. Michael Gill, a co-author of the University of Copenhagen, said that even the IPCC usually assumes that "a safe operating space 1.5 or 2.0 degrees higher than the current one may not be so safe."
During the heat wave, about 800 people died in the Pacific Northwest, and this number may rise as officials check medical records and statistics in the coming weeks and months. On June 29, the highest temperature in Litton, British Columbia, was 121.3 degrees Fahrenheit. After setting a Canadian high temperature record for three consecutive days, most of the town was destroyed by wildfires driven by hot winds in nearby dry forests. In addition to causing several major wildfires in the area that are still burning, the heat also scalds growing fruits and leaves on trees and other vegetation.
The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service Center said on Wednesday that the average temperature in June was the highest temperature on record in North America and the fourth highest on record in the world. In early July, the northern region of Scandinavia was extremely hot, and temperatures in parts of Finland hit a record high. The continued high temperatures in northeastern Russia are fueling fires there, emitting record levels of carbon dioxide at this time of the year. In the west, another dangerous high temperature is forming, which may peak in central and eastern California this weekend.
The publication of the Pacific Northwest heat wave attribution study coincides with other new studies with extreme heat warnings.
A study published by Monash University scientists in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health on Wednesday provided a comprehensive assessment of the number of deaths from high temperatures when the global average temperature rose by nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit between 2000 and 2019. It attributes approximately 637,550 deaths each year in these years to high temperatures, of which approximately 224,000 deaths per year in Asia, 78,000 deaths in Europe, and 19,000 deaths in the United States.
Maarten van Aalst of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Climate Center and the University of Twente said that the high death toll in the Pacific Northwest is “regrettable, no longer an accident, but part of a very worrying global trend” , And pointed out that the heat wave is the deadliest climate disaster in the world in 2019 and 2020.
Kristie L. Ebi of the University of Washington Center for Health and Global Environment said that in the United States, high temperatures are the main weather-related killer. But she said that as long as there is a good plan, almost all these deaths can be prevented.
The community needs an effective high temperature action plan to prepare for the extreme heat that is now completely unexpected. van Aalst said that early warning and response systems and community outreach programs (neighbors check each other in high-temperature emergencies) are one of the best tools to save lives. Studies have also shown that according to extreme high temperature forecasts, changes in personnel and schedules for hospital and ambulance services can prevent deaths.
Otto, one of the scientists engaged in attribution research, said the new attribution research reinforces previous warnings that more extreme heat waves need to be prepared in a rapidly warming climate. She said that these findings should be considered in the context of what society can adapt to and what they can adapt to.
"This is not something you planned or expected to happen," she said. "Today's model does not give a good indication of what will happen in the case of 1.5 degrees Celsius (degrees Celsius) warming. Most societies are sensitive to small changes, which are not small changes, but large changes. We should definitely not expect The heat wave will show up as it did in the past."
Carl-Friedrich Schleussner said that global warming increases the chance of rare events, such as floods that occur once in 100 years, which occur every few years.
"In the changing climate of mankind, we have not yet seen what the once-in-50-year event will look like," he said. "People think these extreme events are very special, but they are not. We are leaving the climate window of the Holocene, and we have been enjoying a stable climate for the past 8000 years."
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He said that the world has risen by about 1.2 degrees from its pre-industrial average temperature, enough to cause abnormal and dangerous extreme high temperatures.
"People don't really understand or understand what a 1.2 degree climate change is," he said.
He warned that the relationship between change and global warming is non-linear, which means that a small increase in global average temperature will stimulate a proportional increase in dangerous heat. Studies have shown that without man-made warming, extreme events like the European heat wave that killed about 70,000 people in 2003 are almost impossible to occur, and if the temperature rises by 1 degree Fahrenheit, it may happen every other year by the 2040s. Happened once.
"Our climate experience has not prepared us to understand the scale of what is happening," he said. "People talk about loading dice and throwing six points. Global warming is loading the dice, so we are now throwing a 7, which was impossible before."
Bob Berwyn is a freelance journalist based in Austria and has been covering climate science and international climate policy for more than a decade. Previously, he reported on the environment, endangered species, and public lands for several newspapers in Colorado. He also served as an editor and assistant editor for community newspapers in the Colorado Rockies.
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