Heat Waves: Causes and Global Consequences
Summer 2022 is not over yet, but it has already become a historical event and will be remembered for a long time. In Europe, many countries faced one of their most severe summers in decades and potentially in history. The UK, for instance, experienced its highest ever temperature of 104 Fahrenheit (around 40 Celsius), and forecasters warned temperatures were still climbing, with more than one month of summer ahead. Extremely hot temperatures were registered in France, which had its hottest May ever. Record July temperatures were reported in the Netherlands. Deadly forest fires in Spain, Portugal, and Greece have forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes, and trains in those countries were halted because of fires near the tracks. German Environment Minister Steffi Lemke stated that the climate crisis indicated that the country has to rethink its preparations for very hot weather, drought, and flooding. The US also suffers from this problem: around 100 million people from New York City to Las Vegas have been under heat warnings this week as temperatures have risen above 100 Fahrenheit (38 Celsius), indicating a worrisome trend of extreme weather.
The heat waves also have caused non-expected political effects. For instance, a melting glacier in the Alps has brought a different issue to be addressed: it has shifted the border between Switzerland and Italy, putting the location of an Italian mountain lodge in dispute. The borderline between these two countries is located along a drainage divide, which is the point at which meltwater will run down either side of the mountain towards one country or the other. It was already alarming that the Theodul Glacier had lost almost a quarter of its mass in the last five decades, but now it has altered the drainage divide and forced the two neighbors to redraw the limits of their border. Besides that, another challenge the whole world faces with the heat waves is labor reduction - especially in construction and in rural areas. A 2019 International Labour Organization report, Working on a Warmer Planet, foresaw that India is expected “to lose the equivalent of 34 million full-time jobs by 2030 as a result of heat stress”.
The reasons for those heat waves are complex and linked to global warming. The Arctic is warming three to four times faster than the globe as a whole, meaning there is ever less difference between northern temperatures and those closer to the equator. That is resulting in swings in the North Atlantic jet stream, which in turn leads to extreme weather events like heat waves and floods.
“Climate change is driving this heat wave”, said the co-lead of World Weather Attribution Friederike Otto. Climate change makes heat waves hotter and more frequent according to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The greenhouse gas emissions from human activities have increased the temperature by around 1.2 Celsius since pre-industrial times. Furthermore, the hot and dry conditions and the less moisturized vegetation are easier for wildfires to spread faster and burn longer.
However, climate change is not the only reason for extreme weather and disasters induced by it. The lack of forest management can be a factor that causes unpredictable wildfires. Also, some researchers believe that draining soil and plants can also accelerate global warming because the energy that is supposed to evaporate into the water goes to warm the air instead. In Europe, double jet occurrences, warming ocean water, and their correlations to extreme warmth must also be highlighted.
Climate change is affecting human activities more directly and profoundly. The World Weather Attribution determined that an extreme heatwave in Western Europe in June 2019 was 100 times more likely to occur now in France and the Netherlands than if humans had not changed the climate. Moreover, extreme heat can increase the risk of other types of disasters, such as drought and wildfire. According to the American Public Health Association’s report, extreme heat killed an average of more than 600 people per year from 1999-2009. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration list heat waves as top 10 deadliest U.S. disasters since 1980. If global warming continues at the same pace, it could turn some areas, especially small islands, into uninhabitable spots.
The world’s poor and vulnerable will be hit the hardest, even though the 1 percent of the world’s richest create even 30 times more than the poorest 50 percent and 175 times more than the poorest 10 percent. People including elder adults, children, people with chronic health conditions, and outdoor workers are more vulnerable to extreme heat than others.
From now on, it is essential to reduce the consumption of fossil fuel and other traditional non-renewable energy, seek and utilize alternative energy, and integrate sustainability into companies’ and individuals’ lives. Meanwhile, it is also necessary to build resilience to extreme heat, such as opening cooling centers during certain periods of time, installing cool and green roofs, and planting trees to provide shade.
References
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/19/climate/europe-heat-wave-science.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62216159
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/coast-coast-us-heat-wave-threatens-tighten-its-grip-2022-07-20/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31432-y
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/24/how-climate-change-drives-heatwaves-and-wildfires
https://whyy.org/articles/un-ipcc-climate-change-report-uninhabitable-planet-code-red/
https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/the-worlds-richest-people-also-emit-the-most-carbon
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