Although this week’s incredible heat wave is likely the result of a temporary event, scientists believe it is consistent with climate change and predicted more severe events in the future if action isn’t taken now to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Don Wuebbles, Harry E. Preble Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Illinois, a climate change adviser under former President Barack Obama, and the author of more than 500 scientific publications related to Earth’s climate, air quality, and the ozone layer, agreed it’s too simplistic to write off this week’s heat wave as a particular weather event — a high-pressure heat dome.
Mr. Wuebbles, a coordinating lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2007, added that “the reality is climate change is influencing every such event anymore, which is why [heat waves] are likely to be more intense than similar weather patterns we have seen in the past.”
“We are seeing many unnatural disasters that, when analyzed, are definitely being affected and intensified by the changing climate,” he said. “This increasing intensity, along with sea level rise, is why economic analyses say the costs of action on climate change are much less than the costs of inaction.”
According to Scientific American, this week’s temperatures are breaking records because the Midwest and Northeast have been encapsulated by what scientists call a heat dome.
The heat dome “is taking shape in part because of the jet stream,” Scientific American states. “This fast-moving river of air high in the atmosphere helps guide weather systems across the U.S. as it undulates to the north and south. When it makes a particularly large jog northward, the air piles up and sinks, heating up as it does.”
Jonathan Overpeck, a University of Michigan interdisciplinary climate scientist who serves as Samuel A. Graham Dean of UM’s School for Environment and Sustainability, also said this week’s heat wave is consistent with climate change.
“It’s dangerous heat,” Mr. Overpeck told The Blade. “Climate change is making these heat waves hotter and hotter, and this is a good example” of what’s to come if more action isn’t taken to reduce emissions. “There's a simple solution, and it's to reduce emissions.”
Mr. Overpeck noted worsening air quality during these heat waves, as well.
Toledo Environmental Services and the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments have urged area residents to take it easy until the heat wave passes, especially if they have asthma, COPD, or other respiratory ailments.
The extreme heat and stagnant air combine with ground-level ozone to form more smog.
Even after this heat wave passes, this region will continue to take more than its share of climate change impacts.
Toledo is one of the fastest-warming cities, statistically, in the United States since the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, according to Climate Central records provided to The Blade.
Climate Central is a data-driven group of scientists and communicators based in Princeton, N.J., that helps meteorologists and journalists tell better stories about climate change on the local level.
The group’s data shows that Toledo has had a 4.4 degree increase over those 54 years, higher than the Ohio average of 2.8 degrees and the national average of 2.6 degrees.
Toledo is tied with Phoenix for 10th nationally out of 237 cities, Peter Girard, Climate Central vice president of communications, said.
The fastest-warming city is Reno, Nev., according to Climate Central data.
Alaska is the fastest-warming state.
Toledo also has, on average, 46 days per year of heat so extreme it can cause premature death, twice the number it had in 1970, the group said.
“Mortality due to extreme temperatures is one of the most worrying impacts of climate change,” according to a paper published in August by the National Library of Medicine, one of many on the subject.
The paper said it expects temperature-related deaths to shift northward as climate change intensifies because Northern cities are generally less adapted to heat impacts.
Jeff Reutter isn’t a climate scientist, but the retired Ohio Sea Grant and Ohio State University Stone Laboratory director said he fears what is coming to the western Lake Erie region if more action isn’t taken to address climate change.
If the water in the western basin of Lake Erie gets much warmer, the amount of algae-forming phosphorus released from sediment will greatly increase. That will make it harder to prevent harmful algal blooms, Mr. Reutter said.
Although rainfall and wind largely dictate how much phosphorus-laden farm soil from northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan gets into Lake Erie tributaries from year to year, much of the sediment already in the water has so-called “legacy phosphorus” in it to begin with.
“We should expect to see less ice in winter,” Mr. Reutter said. “Less ice means more waves and more coastal erosion and damage to shoreline property.”
Equally troubling for Mr. Reutter are rising ocean temperatures, which he said was incredibly worrisome.
“Higher ocean temps will greatly increase the strength of hurricanes and tropical storms,” he said. “Those warmer ocean temps also lead to more evaporation, so the storms that develop over the ocean will pull more energy and more water from the ocean. When those storms move inland, they will dump more water, creating more severe floods.”
This May’s global surface temperature was Earth’s warmest for the 12th consecutive month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said last week.
There is now a 50-50 chance that 2024 will go down in history as Earth’s warmest year since record-keeping began in the late 1800s, and a 100 percent chance it will rank in the top five, NOAA said.
May temperatures were above average across most of the global land surface except for western North America, Greenland, the southern part of South America, western Russia, and parts of eastern Antarctica, NOAA added.
Oceans globally have been recording record months for warmth since April, 2023.
The average annual global temperature has been above the world’s 20th Century average each year since 1977. Degrees above the 20th-century average have been growing each year, NOAA said.
Through May, the United States has sustained 11 weather and climate-related disasters that have caused $1 billion or more in damages.
First Published June 18, 2024, 9:17 p.m.
