<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#f9f9fa">
<p> </p>
<div id="toolbar" class="toolbar-container"> </div>
<div class="container" style="--line-height:1.6em;" dir="ltr">
<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <a
class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07072021/pacific-northwest-heat-wave-attribution-study-climate-change/">insideclimatenews.org</a>
<h1 class="reader-title">A Week After the Pacific Northwest Heat
Wave, Study Shows it Was ‘Almost Impossible’ Without Global
Warming - Inside Climate News</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Bob Berwyn</div>
<div class="meta-data">
<div class="reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">8-10 minutes</div>
</div>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="content">
<div class="moz-reader-content reader-show-element">
<div id="readability-page-1" class="page">
<div id="content">
<article id="post-56017">
<div>
<p>The high temperatures in late June that killed
hundreds of people in Oregon, Washington and Canada
were so unusual that they couldn’t have happened
without a boost from human-caused global warming,
researchers said Wednesday when they released a
rapid climate attribution study of the heat wave in
the Pacific Northwest.</p>
<p>The temperatures were so far off the charts that
the scientists suggested that global warming may be
triggering a “non-linear” climate response, <a
href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02072021/dry-springs-hot-summers-southwest-united-states/">possibly
involving drought</a> magnifying the warming, to
brew up extreme heat storms that exceed climate
projections. </p>
<p>Climate change, caused by greenhouse gas emissions,
made the Pacific Northwest heat wave at least 150
times more likely, and increased its peak
temperatures by about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the <a
href="https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/analysis/heatwave/">study
by World Weather Attribution</a> concluded. </p>
<p>“I think it’s by far the largest jump in the record
that I have ever seen,” said <a
href="https://twitter.com/FrediOtto">Fredi Otto</a>,
a University of Oxford climate researcher and
co-author of the study. “We have seen temperature
jumps in other heat waves, like in Europe, but never
this big.”</p>
<p>The extreme temperature spike shook up some
fundamental assumptions about heat waves, said
co-author <a
href="https://twitter.com/gjvoldenborgh">Geert Jan
van Oldenborgh</a>, of the Royal Dutch
Meteorological Institute. </p>
<p>“It was way above the upper bounds,” he said. “It
was surprising and I’m shaken that our theoretical
understanding of how heat waves behave was so
roughly broken. We’ve dialed down our certainty.”</p>
<p>If global warming has pushed the climate past a
heat wave tipping point, he added, “we are worried
about these things happening everywhere.”</p>
<p>The Pacific Northwest heat wave should be a big
warning, said co-author <a
href="https://twitter.com/DimCoumou">Dim Coumou</a>,
with the Institute for Environmental Studies at VU
Amsterdam and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological
Institute. It shows climate scientists don’t
understand the mechanisms driving such exceptionally
high temperatures, suggesting that “we may have
crossed a threshold in the climate system where a
small amount of additional global warming causes a
faster rise in extreme temperatures.”</p>
<p>In an unrelated <a
href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-90138-1.epdf?sharing_token=XWZRLMrwEjLimKAwDqi8R9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MXXrl9T_DJai7v-hCJoxYX98GcqwkqHWa43OSb202U3YMEjOgbQreHIao3_FYwHRfa-igk2YzCsNxG6uc6l0aHEr41tHVQGgeHBBD7izfbQM4DcZnKSjS7qAzxbYyfNQo%3D">study</a>
published July 6, European Union researchers
studying climate tipping points found additional
evidence that human-caused warming could be “abrupt
and irreversible,” partly because the current
warming is so fast that the climate system can’t
adjust. Even the “safe operating space of 1.5 or 2.0
degrees above present generally assumed by the IPCC
might not be all that safe,” said co-author Michael
Ghil, with the University of Copenhagen.</p>
<p>About 800 people died across the Pacific Northwest
during the heat wave, a number that will probably
still go up as officials examine medical records and
statistics in the coming weeks and months. The peak
temperature was 121.3 degrees Fahrenheit on June 29
in Lytton, British Columbia. After setting heat
records for Canada on three consecutive days, the
town was mostly destroyed by a wildfire driven by
hot winds in the dried out forests nearby. In
addition to contributing to several major wildfires
in the region that are still burning, the heat<a
href="https://twitter.com/pmagn/status/1412621024617648130">
cooked growing fruit</a> and scalded foliage on <a
href="https://twitter.com/SallyNAitken/status/1412148255153016848">trees
and other vegetation</a>. </p>
<p>The European Union’s <a
href="https://twitter.com/CopernicusECMWF/status/1412674464349921281">Copernicus
Climate Change Service</a> said Wednesday that the
average June temperature was the highest on record
for North America and the fourth-highest on record
globally. In early July, extreme heat boiled over in
northern Scandinavia, with parts of Finland
reporting record-breaking temperatures. Persistent
heat across northeastern Russia is fueling fires
there that are <a
href="https://twitter.com/Pierre_Markuse/status/1412454135073542145">emitting
record levels of carbon dioxide</a> for this time
of year. And in the West, yet <a
href="https://twitter.com/Weather_West/status/1412532684782411778">another
spasm of dangerous heat is building</a>,
potentially peaking this weekend in central and
eastern California.</p>
<h2><strong>The Deadliest Climate Extreme</strong></h2>
<p>Release of the attribution study of the Pacific
Northwest heat wave coincided with other new
research with dire heat warnings. </p>
<p>A study led by Monash University scientists
published Wednesday in <em>The Lancet Planetary
Health</em> gives a comprehensive evaluation of
heat deaths around the world from 2000 to 2019, a
period when the global average temperature rose by
nearly a full degree Fahrenheit. It attributes about
637,550 deaths during each of those years to high
heat, including about 224,000 deaths per year in
Asia, 78,000 in Europe and 19,000 in the United
States. </p>
<p>The high death toll in the Pacific Northwest was
“sadly, no longer a surprise but part of a very
worrying global trend,” said <a
href="https://twitter.com/mkvaalst">Maarten van
Aalst</a>, with the <a
href="https://twitter.com/RCClimate">Red Cross Red
Crescent Climate Centre</a> and University of
Twente, noting that heat waves were the world’s
deadliest climate disasters in 2019 and 2020. </p>
<p>In the U.S., heat is the leading weather-related
killer, said <a
href="https://twitter.com/kristie_ebi">Kristie L.
Ebi</a>, of the Center for Health and the Global
Environment at the University of Washington. But
with good planning, nearly all those deaths are
preventable, she said. </p>
<p>Communities need effective heat action plans that
prepare for what are now completely unexpected heat
extremes. Early warning and response systems, and
community outreach programs, with neighbors checking
on each other during heat emergencies, are among the
best tools for saving lives, van Aalst said. There
is also research showing that staff and scheduling
changes at hospitals and ambulance services, based
on extreme heat forecasts, can prevent deaths. </p>
<h2><strong>Loading the Dice for Weather Extremes</strong></h2>
<p>The new attribution study bolsters previous
warnings about the need to prepare for more extreme
heat waves in a rapidly warming climate, said Otto,
one of scientists working on the attribution study.
The findings should be considered in the context of
what societies are resilient to, and what they can
adapt to, she said.</p>
<p>“This is not something you would plan for, or
expect to happen,” she said. “The models of today
are not a good indicator of what to expect at 1.5
degrees (Celsius) of warming. Most societies are
sensitive to small changes, and this is not a small
change, it’s a big change. We should definitely not
expect heat waves to behave in the same way they
have in the past.” </p>
<p>Global warming has jacked up the odds for rare
events, like 100-year floods, to happen every few
years, said <a
href="https://twitter.com/CarlSchleussner">Carl-Friedrich
Schleussner</a>.</p>
<p>“We haven’t seen what a once in a 50 year event
looks like now, in a climate altered by humans,” he
said. “People are relating to those extreme events
as really exceptional, and they are not. We are on
the way to leaving the climate window of the
Holocene, of the last 8,000 years where we’ve been
enjoying a stable climate.”</p>
<div>
<h3>Keep Environmental Journalism Alive</h3>
<p>ICN provides award-winning, localized climate
coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely
on donations from readers like you to keep going.</p>
<p><a
href="https://checkout.fundjournalism.org/memberform?org_id=insideclimate&amount=50&campaign=7013a000002DbIAAA0">Donate
Now</a></p>
<p>You will be redirected to ICN’s donation partner.</p>
</div>
<p>Already, the world has warmed about 1.2 degrees
from the pre-industrial average, he said, enough to
fuel exceptional and dangerous heat extremes.</p>
<p>“It’s not really comprehended or understood what a
climate change of 1.2 degrees is,” he said.</p>
<p>He warned that change is non-linear with global
warming, meaning that a small rise of the average
global temperature can spur a proportionately bigger
increase in dangerous heat. Studies show that
extremes like the 2003 European heat wave that
killed about 70,000 people would have been nearly
impossible without human caused warming and, with
just another 1 degree Fahrenheit of warming, are
likely to happen every other year by the 2040s.</p>
<p>“Our climate experience doesn’t prepare us to
understand the scale of what’s going on,” he said.
“People talk about loading the dice and throwing
sixes. Global warming is loading the dice so we’re
throwing sevens now, something impossible
previously.”</p>
<div>
<p><img
src="https://mk0insideclimats3pe4.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/gOmMa-dc_400x400-300x300.jpg"
alt="" width="300" height="300"> </p>
<div>
<h4>Freelancer</h4>
<p>Bob Berwyn an Austrian-based freelance reporter
who has covered climate science and
international climate policy for more than a
decade. Previously, he reported on the
environment, endangered species and public lands
for several Colorado newspapers, and also worked
as editor and assistant editor at community
newspapers in the Colorado Rockies.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</article>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
</body>
</html>