US Pacific Northwest faces unprecedented heat wave

The Pacific Northwest’s average temperature has warmed more than 2 F compared with a century ago, with most of that change in the last 40 years.

US Pacific Northwest faces unprecedented heat wave

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• Latest danger: A strong heat wave broke high temperature records in Oregon and Washington (US) in June, raising risks for deaths and fires, and underscoring the dangers of climate change. Portland, Oregon’s biggest city, hit an all-time high of 112 degrees Fahrenheit (44.4 C) at its international airport, breaking a record of 108 F set a day earlier. Both days topped the previous record of 107 F, reached in 1981 and 1965.
• Breaking records regularly: Weather experts say they never saw many events where places are breaking their all-time record high temperatures by 4 degrees, or 5 degrees. It’s one thing to break it by a degree or two, but it’s another thing to literally break it by 4 or 5 degrees, in places that have 100 years’ worth of data, or 120 years’ worth of data. Even beaches baked hot.
• Pacific northwest: This hot weather appeared to be part of a broader climate change trend. The Pacific Northwest’s average temperature has warmed more than 2 F compared with a century ago, with most of that change in the last 40 years. In addition, the number of extreme heat days has doubled in less than a century. In 1940, Portland had only about 10 days per year when the daily high temperature topped 90 F. By 2020, that number is at about 20 days per year.

1. Those highs may not seem extreme compared with those in places where summer days typically exceed 90 F (32.2 C), often accompanied by high humidity. But Pacific Northwest residents are used to temperate weather, and many houses lack air conditioning, several weather experts said. That makes the heat wave potentially deadly.
2. The roasting of the Pacific Northwest follows other June heat waves in the West. Between June 10 and June 15, high temperatures set records in parts of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.
3. It’s difficult to immediately quantify how much impact climate change has had on a climate extreme, but there is evidence to show that high temperatures and heat waves have become worse due to climate change.
4. Heatwaves across the contiguous United States have occurred more often and lasted longer since the 1960s, which is consistent with a warming climate due to climate change.

• Not cooling enough at night: The issue is not just with record high temperatures. During the heat wave, the Pacific Northwest hasn’t cooled down much at night, a dangerous situation. When that happens, opening windows doesn’t help homes cool off much and people’s bodies don’t get a chance to cool off and recover. This is life-threatening heat. The high temperatures came as the result of a high-pressure system over Oregon and Washington. Climate change played a role in that system.
• How it forms: A mechanism for the formation of a high-pressure system is tropical cyclone activity in the western Pacific Ocean. Those are the West Coast equivalent of hurricanes. And like hurricanes, they are strengthened by warmer ocean temperatures. High-pressure systems like the one driving the Pacific Northwest heat wave is “something like three times more likely to occur when we have a tropical cyclone out in the Pacific”. So climate change is impacting tropical cyclone activity through modulation of sea surface temperatures, and also things like wind shear.
• Fire risks: The heat wave raises fire risk as it dries out vegetation. It could be so dry that sparks from cars, from catalytic converters, from a tow chain, can set up a spark that can then ignite all of the fuels!
• Knowledge centre:

1. Pacific northwest - The Pacific Northwest is the region of the western United States located adjacent to the Pacific Ocean. It runs north to south from British Columbia, Canada, to Oregon. Idaho, parts of Montana, northern California, and southeastern Alaska are also listed as parts. Although the definition of Pacific Northwest varies and even the residents of this region have not agreed on the exact boundary, the common definition includes only three US states in the region, namely Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. The Pacific Northwest of the United States is best known for its beautiful coastline, green interior, rainy weather, and spectacular mountains.
2. Heat wave - A heat wave is a period of unusually hot weather that may last two or more days. To be considered a heat wave, the temperatures have to be outside the historical averages for a given area. As per the US National Weather Service, "A heat dome occurs when high pressure in the upper atmosphere acts as a lid, preventing hot air from escaping." Severe heat waves have caused catastrophic crop failures, thousands of deaths from hyperthermia, and widespread power outages due to increased use of air conditioning.
3. Western Pacific ocean - The Pacific Ocean is a body of salt water extending from the Antarctic region in the south to the Arctic in the north and lying between the continents of Asia and Australia on the west and North America and South America on the east. The WPR (Western Pacific Region) includes Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Cook Islands, Fiji, Japan, Kiribati, Laos, Malaysia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Mongolia, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Singapore, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Taiwan, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Vietnam.

 

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