Record pollution and heat herald a season of climate extremes
It’s not officially summer in the Northern Hemisphere yet. But the extremes are already there.
Fires are raging across Canada, blanketing parts of the eastern United States in suffocating orange-gray smoke. Puerto Rico is under a severe heat alert, like other parts of the world. Earth’s oceans have been warming at an alarming rate.
Human-induced climate change is a force behind these kinds of extremes. While there is no specific study yet to attribute this week’s events to global warming, the science is unequivocal that global warming significantly increases the likelihood of severe wildfires and heat waves, such as those that are currently ravaging large parts of northern meet America.
Scientists also warn that a global weather pattern known as El Niño could develop before the end of the year, possibly setting new heat records.
Taken together, the week’s extremes offer one clear conclusion: the world’s wealthiest continent remains unprepared for the perils of the not-too-distant future. A sign of that came Wednesday when Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government could soon establish a disaster response agency to “ensure that we do everything we can to predict, protect and prevent more of these events.” coming.”
The recent fires have also shattered the notion that some places are relatively safe from the worst of climate change hazards because they are neither near the equator nor far from the sea. Almost without warning, the smoke from distant fires turned everyday life upside down.
So much smoke from wildfires pushed through the border that in Buffalo, schools canceled outdoor activities. Detroit was suffocated by a toxic haze. Flights were stranded at airports in the northeast.
“Wildfires are no longer just a problem for people who live in fire-prone forest areas,” said Alexandra Paige Fischer, a professor who studies fire adaptation strategies at the University of Michigan.
In the United States, that’s more people already alive with wildfire smoke. A 2022 study by Stanford researchers found that the number of people exposed to toxic pollution from wildfires at least one day a year increased 27 times between 2006 and 2020.
The two countries experiencing these extremes, the United States and Canada, are major producers of oil and gas, which when burned produce the greenhouse gases that have significantly warmed the Earth’s atmosphere. The average global temperature today is more than 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than it was in the pre-industrial era.
Park Williams, a geologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, pointed out that according to climate models, eastern Canada and northern Alberta will become wetter in the coming years. But that was not possible this year. It was a exceptionally dry year through much of Canada. Then came the heat.
Western Canada’s boreal forests provided ready-to-use fuel. The trees and grasses of eastern Canada turned to tinder. “Under warmer temperatures, those dry years will cause things to dry out and become flammable faster than they otherwise would have been,” said Dr. Williams.
As of Wednesday, more than 400 fires were raging west to east across Canada, more than half of them uncontrollable.
Other parts of the world have felt the scorch this year. Vietnam broke a heat record in May, with temperatures reaching over 44 degrees Celsius, or 111 Fahrenheit. China broke heat records in more than 100 weather stations in April. The boreal forests of Siberia burn too.
As in the North American boreal forests, climate change is causing the Siberian fire season to become longer and more intense. It has also increased the number of lightning strikes, said Brendan Rogers, a boreal wildfire expert at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. There are certainly different conditions in different years, he said in an email, but “the common denominator is warm/hot and dry conditions that prepare the ecosystems for burning.”
Where does all that excess heat in the atmosphere go? Much of it is absorbed by the oceans, causing ocean temperatures to rise steadily over the past few decades. reaching records in 2022.
But this spring something strange happened. Scientists announced with unusual alarm that ocean temperatures were the highest in 40 years.
Scientists haven’t found a reason yet, though some say an increase could herald the arrival of El Niño. That weather pattern, which usually lasts several years, brings heat to the surface of the eastern Pacific Ocean. We’ve been living with its cooler cousin, La Niña, for the past few years.
Jeff Berardelli, a meteorologist at WFLA, a television station in Tampa Bay, Florida, warned on Twitter about El Niño’s double whammy in a world already warming from climate change. “We can expect a stunning year of global extremes,” He wrote.
Puerto Rico has been feeling it this week, with record temperatures and high humidity driving the heat index up 125 degrees Fahrenheit (almost 52 degrees Celsius) in parts of the island.
“We sail in uncharted waters,” Ada Monzón, meteorologist at WAPAa television station in Puerto Rico, tweeted.