by WASHINGTON (AP) – Human-caused climate change has turned up the thermostat and turbocharged the odds of this month’s deadly heat baking in the Southwest United States, Mexico and Central America, a finding has found. new flash study.
Sizzling daytime temperatures that triggered cases of heat stroke in parts of the United States were 35 times more likely and 2.5 degrees warmer (1.4 degrees Celsius) due to warming from burning coal, oil and natural gas, World Weather Attribution, the collection of scientists who conduct rapid and non-peer-reviewed studies of climate attribution, calculated Thursday.
“It’s an oven here; you can’t stay here,” said 82-year-old Magarita Salazar Pérez of Veracruz, Mexico, in her home with no air conditioning. Last week, the Sonoran Desert hit 125 degrees (51.9 degrees Celsius), the hottest day in Mexican history, according to study co-author Shel Winkley, a meteorologist at Climate Central.
And it was even worse at night, which is what made this heat wave so deadly, said the climate scientist Imperial College of London Friederike Otto, who coordinates the study team on allocation. Climate change has made nighttime temperatures 2.9 degrees (1.6 degrees Celsius) warmer and unusual evening heat 200 times more likely, she said.
There is just no cool air at night as people are used to it, said Salazar Pérez. Doctors say cooler night temperatures are key to surviving a heat wave.
At least 125 people have died so far, according to the World Weather Attribution team.
“This is clearly related to climate change, the level of intensity we’re seeing, these risks,” said study co-author Karina Izquierdo, a Mexico City-based urban consultant for the Red Cross and Red Crescent Climate Center .
The scary part about this heat wave, which is still technically cooking the North American continent, is that it’s not out of the ordinary anymore, Otto said. Past studies by the group have looked at heat so extreme that it was impossible without climate change, but this heat wave was not so extreme.
“From a weather perspective kind of in that sense it wasn’t rare, but the impact was very bad,” Otto told The Associated Press in an interview.
“The changes we’ve seen in the last 20 years, it feels like just yesterday, are so strong,” Otto said. Their study found that this heat wave is four times more likely to occur now than in the year 2000 when it was almost a degree (0.5 degrees Celsius) cooler than it is now. “It seems kind of far away and a different world.”
While other groups of international scientists – and the global target for reducing carbon emissions adopted by countries in the 2015 Paris climate accord – point to warming since the pre-industrial era in the mid-1800s, Otto said it is more significant to compare what happening now and the year 2000.
“We’re looking at a shifting baseline — what was once extreme but rare, is becoming more common,” said Carly Kenkel, the University of Southern California’s Chair of Marine Studies, who was not part of the assigned team’s study. She said the analysis was “the logical conclusion based on the data.”
The study looked at much of the continent, including southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize and Honduras and the five hottest days in a row and the five hottest consecutive nights. For most of the area, those five days ran from June 3 to 7 and those five nights were June 5 to 9, but in some places the peak began on May 26, Otto said.
For example, San Angelo, Texas, hit a record high of 111 degrees (43.8 degrees Celsius) on June 4. Between June 2nd and June 6th the overnight temperature never fell below 80 degrees (26.7 degrees Celsius) at the Corpus Christi airport, a record nightly. , for two days when the thermometer did not drop below 85 (29.4 degrees Celsius) according to the National Weather Service.
Between June 1 and June 15, more than 1,200 daytime high temperature records were tied or broken in the United States and nearly 1,800 nighttime high temperature records were achieved, according to the National Center for Environmental Information.
The allocation team used current and past temperature measurements, contrasting what is happening with what has happened in past heat waves. They then used the scientifically accepted technique of comparing simulations of a fictional world without human-caused climate change with current reality to find the contribution of global warming to the 2024 heat wave.
The immediate meteorological cause was a high pressure system parked over central Mexico that blocked cooling storms and clouds, then moved to the Southwestern US and is now bringing the heat to the Eastern United States, Winkley said. Tropical Storm Alberto formed on Wednesday and is heading to northern Mexico and southern Texas with some rain, which could cause flooding.
Mexico and other places have been dealing for months with drought, water shortages and brutal heat. Monkeys are falling from trees in Mexico from the heat.
This heat wave increases the inequalities that already exist between rich and poor in America, Izquierdo said, and Kenkel agreed. The heat at night is when the inequalities really become apparent because the ability to cool down depends on air conditioning central to how financially comfortable they are. , Kenkel said.
And that means during this heat wave Salazar Pérez will be quite uncomfortable.
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Félix Márquez in Veracruz, Mexico and Teresa de Miguel in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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Read more about AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment
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