As much of the nation swelters in temperatures that have canceled outdoor sports, sparked wildfires and strained the infrastructure to keep people cool, experts warn the heat waves will only be more common
Heat waves are just one type of extreme climate change that are becoming more common, but this year they have already caused deaths both in the United States and around the world.
“This is the climate change that scientists have promised us,” Michal Nachmany, founder of Climate Policy Radar, told CBS News foreign correspondent Ramy Inocencio about record temperatures in the UK this week.
“This level of extreme weather is life-threatening and we really want to make sure people are under no illusions that this is serious and that this is here to stay for the foreseeable future,” Nachmany said. .
In Phoenix, for example, heat kills as many people as homicides, David Hondula, the city’s director of heat response and mitigation, told CBS News’ Ben Tracy.
Climate scientist Daniel Swain, who writes about weather in the western United States on his website, noted last week that what he called “a prolonged and locally intense heat wave across the western North America in the coming weeks” is “the least extreme event of its kind”. currently underway on multiple continents,” including Europe and China.
The Associated Press reports that heat waves in China earlier this month, specifically in Zhejiang province east of Shanghai, saw temperatures above 42 degrees Celsius (up to 107 degrees Fahrenheit). The heat also hospitalized people in Henang, Sichuan and Heilongiang provinces.
The human toll of this year’s heat is rising both around the world and closer to home. In North Texas, where firefighters battled 780 percent more fires in July than last year, and officials said a 66-year-old woman died of heat-related causes this week, La Niña is helping to drive dry conditions and high heat.
“We have a pretty significant drought in North and Central Texas. This drought brought us into summer much earlier than we normally see,” said Sarah Barnes, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Fort Worth office. Texas, on CBS News. ‘Kris Van Cleave.
Those drought conditions lead to warmer temperatures, the NWS said.
“We’re certainly seeing more extreme weather because of climate change,” Barnes added.
Although air conditioning is one of the best ways to stay cool, it is not common everywhere. And when the power goes out, the air conditioning goes off.
“There has been a doubling of the number of blackouts annually in the last five years, and most blackouts occur in the summer, with warm weather,” Brian Stone, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology who study the urban climate. change, he told CBS Moneywatch earlier this year.
In Texas, the power grid has already been taxed by extreme temperatures this summer, and officials in other states are warning that their power infrastructure could be as well.
“Most summers these days are the hottest summer on record. What’s overlapping is just an increasing risk of aging infrastructure … and these trends are converging at the wrong time,” Stone said.
This week Britain hit a record high of 40 degrees Celsius, or about 104 Fahrenheit, 30 degrees hotter than typical summer temperatures in a country where an estimated less than 5% of homes had air conditioning, reports the CBS News foreign correspondent Roxana Saberi.
“Climate change has everything to do with the extreme weather we’re seeing at the moment, and it’s human-induced climate change. It’s not natural variation,” said Kirsty McCabe, a meteorologist at the UK’s Royal Meteorological Society. United, on CBS News. correspondent Roxana Saberi.
The extreme heat has contributed to bushfires in the UK and across Europe, including France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal.
“We used to look at polar bears, and then say, ‘This is about our children and our grandchildren,'” Nachmany said. “This is not. This is us. This is here. This is now.”
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