HEAT WAVE: Above normal temperatures across a wide swathe of the U.S. is different and more dangerous than heat waves of the past, largely due to record-setting nighttime highs.
Image: NOAA
Extreme heat is scorching much of the eastern United States, and it's not expected to let up anytime soon.
Experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center say much of the southern half of the country will be hotter than normal in August, with the worst conditions in Texas, Louisiana and parts of Mississippi and Arkansas.
"We have quite a few records being set," said Deke Arndt, chief of the climate modeling branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center. "This is a very large heat wave."
Most damaging, federal forecasters said yesterday, are rising night temperatures.
During the first three weeks of July, 12 weather stations have recorded all-time daytime highs. But 93 weather stations have seen their all-time warmest nighttime temperatures, Arndt said.
In other words, the coolest parts of the day are getting warmer, making it harder for people -- especially those without air conditioning -- to recover from daytime heat exposure.
Studies suggest that kind of prolonged exposure to high temperatures increases the risk of death for vulnerable groups like the elderly, said Rebecca Noe, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency's study of a 2005 heat wave in Maricopa County, Ariz., found that elderly people were more likely to die indoors, while those who died outside were more likely to be younger, working in outdoor occupations or homeless.
"Heat is a 'silent killer,'" Noe said. "The danger is not well-recognized, and people can be caught unprepared for heat waves."
The shift to hotter nights has been developing for some time, Arndt said yesterday.
"This trend to have even more dramatic numbers of overnight lower temperatures being exceedingly warm is consistent with what we have seen in recent decades," he said.
Hot days, high humidity, little relief at night
That was one conclusion of a 2009 study by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and NOAA, who found that nights are getting warmer. Their study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, also found evidence that climate change is skewing the proportion of record high temperatures to record low temperatures in the continental United States, with extremely hot days now outnumbering extremely cold days by 2-to-1.
Meanwhile, the current heat wave's scorching temperatures are exacerbated by high humidity, which makes it harder for the body to cool down by sweating.
The National Weather Service is predicting highs of 103 degrees Fahrenheit in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, with muggy conditions making it feel even hotter -- the equivalent of 115 degrees.
Conditions will be slightly cooler in New York City, where the mercury is expected to hit 99 degrees, with a heat index of 108 degrees.
The agency has placed large swaths of the Midwestern and mid-Atlantic regions, as well as the Ohio Valley, under "excessive heat warnings," which it issues when it expects a heat index of at least 105 degrees Fahrenheit for three hours a day, two days in a row, or a heat index of 115 degrees for any length of time.
The current heat wave comes after record or near-record temperatures last month in many parts of the country.
This year saw the seventh-warmest year on record, globally, while the first six months of 2011 were the 11th-warmest year-to-date on record, Arndt said.
In the United States, last month was the 26th-warmest June in 117 years of record-keeping.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1853
80 years ago there was no air conditioning, no ice water, no "cooling centers"; hell, most of the interior of the country had no electricity. 15% of the population still churned it's own butter.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDuring the period between 1931 and 1935 America saw the greatest and most widespread drought and several of the longest hottest summers on record. It happens. It's called nature.
Given that 2/3 of the U.S. population is overweight or obese, it is no surprise that people are dropping dead in the heat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople with lean healthy bodies should have no problem dealing with the heat.
These people are not actually dying from the heat but rather from many years of abusing their bodies and the heat merely pushed them over the edge.
Tens of thousands have died in Western Europe and Russia in recent years due to heat related issues.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe economic divide between rich and poor has become downright monstrous. Los Ricos can afford to refrigerate 40 room summer homes while other folks can scarcely afford to refrigerate their food.
It's a good time to not be very young, very old, or poor.
Natural selection at work? Yup. Good luck Grandma; time to stop wasting money on insulin and start paying the electric bill.
Dancer: "Given that 2/3 of the U.S. population is overweight or obese, it is no surprise that people are dropping dead in the heat.'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgreed. If someone can't be bothered to keep themselves in shape, then I don't worry about their health. They can't be bothered so why should I.
With the elderly it's different. Hats off the the 80 year-olds who has taken care of themselves and have exercised and kept lean. They deserve my help.
There have been abnormally strong high pressure areas over the US causing high temperatures and in many places droughts. That same high pressure keeps hurricanes away from the mainland, undoubtedly saving lives. Strange how that part is left out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSpaz: people are not poor because others are rich period. The truth is that never in the world's history has there been as wide a distribution of wealth as there is today.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan you name a time when there were as many people enjoying as much wealth as there is today?
Communism and Socialism, as they were strictly construed in the previous century, merely served to keep its peoples in equally shared misery, and additionally,one would have to wade through about seventy million innocent corpses to make that argument.
Now, wherever Capitalism and Democracy are wed, freedom and wealth ensue. Again, during what time in history has greater wealth been shared by more people?
The issue is not so much how much wealth is floating around, capitalism and democracy notwithstanding, it's the gap between rich and poor, and the costs of living that I'm talking about.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA lot of folks have more money than ever before, but end up spending ~70% of that just on food. Then there's rent - we're not exactly talking landed gentry here - and cooking fuel, etc.
Not good for the general health or political stability.
Le spaz: "A lot of folks have more money than ever before, but end up spending ~70% of that just on food."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrue. That's why they are obese porkers.
People in the US seem to be slowly understanding the end effect of ever increasing Consumerism vis-a-vis Life style closer to the Nature. The Nature has its own balancing systems and no body can succeed with showing any level of disrespect to it. Our Hindu scriptures have commanded worshiping all kinds of trees, animals and rivers/ water sources. Comment 6 above also talks the same thing. A caution here that these old writings should not be considered as religious. It explains or desires a way of life. I am afraid there will be some Corporate propaganda man for sure who will come out with long anecdotes of how Earth was getting colder or hotter due to some changes in the Universe.Let us beware of them and advise money makers and comfort buyers to stop selling and buying cars, and working extra hours for increasing energy consumption. Ecological and Environmental damages are nothing but Damage to the Nature. There are more Heat Waves and more sea storms in store if corrections are not done now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suppose I have made it to 80 by not getting like 60+% of Americans-overweight and underfit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do love that machine on the wall that heats me in the winter and cools me in the summer.
Spent my first 70 years without it.That makes me appreciate it more than you folks I expect.
Not globally. Record summer temperatures in 1934 in the USA were balanced by cooler temperatures elsewhere & other times. It's called random variation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGlobally, the 11 hottest years recorded are during the last 13 years (that's years, not just summers, and globally, not just the 2% of the globe occupied by the USA).
It's happening. It's called anthropogenic climate change.
You say that a lot of folks have more money then ever before but you have to consider that things cost more then ever before. If you look at what people make in wages and what they spend, it probably isn't too far off from the ratio of what it was back in 1950... There are more items to buy now, things cost more, people have to spend more, so there for they make more money. It's a completely unrealistic number to say that 70% is on food alone. They just simply would not be able to afford to live. Besides, this is off topic. In reality, it doesn't matter how much money you make. If you make 20k a year, you can still survive heat waves by following a few simple rules. I mean come on, people have done it for hundreds of years before us with a lot less. Jelly, we get the picture, you have a thing against overweight/fat people...and according to DancerTiffy, that's 2/3 the population.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is a world beyond our borders. There were food riots in Mexico a couple of years ago. The 'Arab Spring' was in large part triggered by dissatisfaction engendered by skyrocketing food prices. Indonesia's fledgling democracy, such as it is, is at risk over food costs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn a world awash with small arms (I read somewhere that there are 47 million AK 47s floating around out there. I used to have one - awesome weapon). It's far too easy to stir up mayhem.
Until some modicum of economic equity is achieved between rich and poor, there will be no peace for much of the world and since our leaders can't seem to keep their fingers out of everybody else's pies, at least if there's a whiff of crude in the neighborhood, that means a lot of perfectly good Americans will be coming home in boxes.
This all way off topic...
That 70% number applies to third world countries. If that happened here DC would be a smoldering ruin by now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOff topic, yes and I'm at least partly to blame. My apologies.
To all: your comments were more enlightening than the article. Too bad there is not some way the author could have had you all vet the article. keep it up.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems like many folks think this is a Social Darwinism or climate change denial website rather than Scientific American website
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNever before in history has there been greater disparities in wealth on this planet. In most of the traditional societies, what are called "primitive" societies, equality and democracy was the rule. This was the case with most Native American tribes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe curious thing about Westerners is that they see science as being applicable only to the field of the pre-biological, i.e. physical sciences whereas science. For over 100 years the leading institutions of the West have sought to disavowel and kind of strictly non-physical science that includes everything from evolutionary theory to Marxism and various psychological theories precisely because such theories indicated that the greatest threat to human survival came not from some tropical disease or an astroid from space but rather from the very structure of society that most people took for granted.
There has been a huge corruption of education and science in America to the point where religious neanderthals would deny the kind of sound education that children and young adults need in order to society to survive.
Today these fundamentalists who seem to want to hold sway see every sort of possitive progressive idea as a threat to THEIR power and the existing social structure which in fact it is.
Nothing stays the same forever and evolution and change are the very essence of what life and the laws of the Universe are based upon.
The Earth is dying and the human race will surely perish with it unless something is done soon to reverse the downward spiral in the affairs of this planet except for that tiny fraction of humanity that own and controls capital.
The power structure in this country and particularly the republicans plays to the most backward and stupid portion of the population in the hope that this dead weight of numbers will deter the more educated and intelligent from speaking up, becoming organized, and intervening directly into the political process as opposed to just sitting on the side lines and letting the death cult or organized religion and unorganized stupidity drag this planet down to the point that it is no longer habitable.
According to Bill Joy with the advent of nanotech the human race will become redundant.Perhaps the thousand or so billionaires who see themselves as the fittest of the species think that as the planet dies they can get their living and non-plasmoid robots to find and develop a new planet for them somewhere else.
They are not human they are a disease.
The best thing humans can do for themselves is to rid themselves of this plague.
After careful consideration and more than a few beers, I have come to the conclusion that CO2 is a red herring wrt to global warming. The real culprit is much more subtle, but utterly uncontrollable. It is the heat generated by burning the fossil fuels themselves.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe energy liberated by your car radiator in cooling your engine has to go somewhere... so where does it go? Into the air. Same with the heat from a power plant, a light bulb or your A/C.
CO2 is meaningless, but it is politically convenient. Much less convenient than telling everyone that we must stop everything now.
An interesting calculation would be to figure out the total heat generated by burning all fossil fuels to date. Too bad I can't do math.
Essentially, all of our fossil fuel
"Silent Killer" ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOut of 300 Million people ..... how many has this "Silent Killer" killed ?
Then look up how many died from falling down the stairs and other kitchen accidents ........
Humbug !
Despite the damage done and lives lost from hurricanes, rain from tropical storms is overall beneficial to the Southeast at this time of year. If not for the rainfall from tropical storms between July and September, the devastation and disruption from drought, failed crops, and heat related deaths would be much greater than the deaths from hurricanes. The problem with hurricanes is not usually the storms themselves but how we have built our lives in harm’s way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisroleednc: Good point. We forget this about much natural phenomena that is termed 'destructive' such as floods, forest fires ,etc. These are often part of a rejuvenation cycle of many ecosystems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI know my Dad grew up in during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl (when the topsoil of the Midwest was blown away after decades of bad farming practices and 5 years of drought) in sandy rural Oklahoma.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven I was born in 1950, about 10 years before my family could afford air conditioning.
As for there being such a disparity between the poor and the rest of us, I don't know that even the poor aren't generally better off that at any prior time in history. However, they are at a disadvantage in their enormous numbers.
The total world population will soon have tripled since I was born. For the younger kids out there, the population has doubled since about 1970. The majority of this growth continues to occur among the poor, not the rich.
With continuing depletion of critical natural resources of potable water, arable land and sea food, normal weather variations can produce catastrophic failures. Never before has the global population of poor people exceeded their abilities to provide for themselves. Today most are now located not in rural areas but in very dense urban population centers, mostly within 50 miles of a seashore.
The Anasazi peoples of the Southwest abandoned the Chaco Canyon community and disbanded in the twelfth century following a period of poor weather beginning with a 50 year drought.
In these current conditions, expect even normal medium and long term weather variations to produce devastating catastrophes never before experienced by humankind. The global population is expected to increase by 30% to about 9 billion by 2050...
It is interesting to drive around the mountain valleys here in the Southwest. The old adobe homesteads are mostly built up on the Holocene terraces above the floodplains. Down on the floodplains one sees all kinds of pre-fabs and trailer homes. The old timers knew what they were dealing with.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor a wonderful account of the great flood of September 1904 in New Mexico, see Frank Waters' "People of the Valley". Out of print, but usually available on line. Great short read for an historical novel.
An interesting read:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.pdf
Everyone should read this. These are not nice people...
Yes, I think that you are correct in your assertion that such anti-scientific troglodites are not "nice people." One of their ilk just did a lot of damage to the people of Norway. Fortunately they are an endangered species!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://diesel67pix.multiply.com/journal/item/178
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