Hot summers, forest fires: scientists say it's climate change



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In the town of Sodankyla, Finland, the July 17 thermometer recorded a record 90 degrees, a remarkable figure as Sodankyla is 59 miles north of the Arctic Circle, in a region known for winter snowmobiling and an abundance of reindeer

It's a hot, strange and dangerous summer across the planet.

Greece is mourning after a scorching heat and the strong winds fueled the forest fires that killed more than 80 people. Japan recorded its highest temperature in history, 106 degrees, in a heat wave that killed 65 people in a week and hospitalized 22,000 shortly after the catastrophic flood of 200. [19659002Montrealreached98degreesonJuly2ndCanadianhealthauthoritiesestimatethatupto70peoplediedinthisheatwave

In the United States, 35 weather stations over the past month have established new brands for warm nighttime temperatures. Southern California experienced record heat and widespread blackouts. In the Yosemite Valley, which is threatened by forest fires, park rangers told everyone to flee.

Severe weather has been overfed by human-induced climate change, scientists say. Climate models for three decades have predicted exactly what the world sees this summer.

And they predict that it will get hotter – and that what is a record today could one day be the norm.

a world that no longer exists, "said Martin Hoerling, research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This is not only Heat: A warming world is subject to multiple types of extreme weather conditions – torrential rains, stronger hurricanes, longer droughts.

"You see roads melting, planes can not take off." Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, said, "Climate change is hitting our Achilles Heel.In the Southwest, it's the availability of water. the Gulf Coast is hurricanes, in the East it is flooding, which aggravates the risks we are already facing today. "

The immediate cause of the melting of the northern hemisphere is the unusual behavior of the co urant-jet, a wavy trajectory of the prevailing west wind is at high altitude. The flow controls large weather patterns, such as high pressure and low pressure systems. The importance of the influence of climate change on the jet stream is a subject of intense research.

This summer, the jet stream waved in extreme waves that resulted in stagnant high pressure and low pressure systems with disastrous results, such as heat waves in some places and floods elsewhere.

"When these waves are very big – as they did Jennifer Francis, professor of atmospheric science at Rutgers University, published last year evidence that conditions leading to "stuck water jets" are becoming more and more obvious, with warming in the Arctic seen as a likely culprit.

Gone are the days when scientists draw a steep line dividing time and climate. Now, researchers can examine a weather event and estimate the climatic changes that caused or worsened the phenomenon.

Last year, when Hurricane Harvey broke the record of rain from a storm, researchers knew that climate change had been a factor.

Months later, scientists made findings that Harvey dumped at least 15% more rain in Houston than it would have been without global warming. Theory, encounter with reality: When the atmosphere is warmer, it may contain more moisture. Climate change does not cause hurricanes or thunderstorms to develop, but it can be an intensifier.

In Dallas, where the temperature reached 100 over 10 days out of 11 this month, three homeless people died last week, Brenda Snitzer, executive director of Stewpot, a center accommodation center In Phoenix, Arizona, where the temperature reached 116 degrees, Dustin Nye, 36, spent the day installing air conditioners. , said that he has suffered heat stroke in the past and always becomes woozy. "It takes a special race to do it all day in this heat," he said. "You really have to work on your stamina and get on with it."

In Los Angeles, Marty Adams, chief operating officer of the Department of Water and Energy, said: "It seems that every year we have had a type of 39, a temperature anomaly that we normally would not have. "Residents of California seaside towns such as Long Beach and Santa Monica, who normally rely on the ocean breeze to cool their homes, added air conditioners, which strike network and contributed to power outages, he said. Hayhoe: "The biggest myth that the greatest number of people has bought is that" climate change does not matter to me personally. "

Heat waves hit hard where people do not expect them – the Netherlands, Sweden, Britain, Ireland and Canada."

"Our office No air conditioning. Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, researcher in climatology at the Royal Meteorological Institute of the Netherlands. He spoke on the phone of the city of Gouda, where the temperature reached 96 degrees on Thursday.

"This kind of event was an event of 1 in 100 in 1900," he said. "It has become 20 times more likely."

It has been Britain's driest summer since modern records began in 1961. Reservoirs are declining rapidly, and water restrictions are in effect. The UK's National Weather Service urged people to avoid the sun this week, with temperatures reaching 98 Fahrenheit

Justin Glawe in Dallas, Jeremy Duda in Phoenix, William Dauber in Los Angeles and Jennifer Hassan in London contributed to this report

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