2023-07-14 12:49:27
Summer has barely begun in the northern hemisphere, but severe heat waves are hitting many regions of the world, from Europe to China, passing through the United States, where record temperatures are expected at the end of the week, indicating the exacerbation of extreme conditions due to climate warming.
More than 100 million Americans are on heat wave alerts, according to the government website heat.gov. Texas, Arizona, Nevada and California expect potentially dangerous conditions in the coming days, with record temperatures expected, the US Meteorological Service warned.
Simultaneously, Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Poland are also facing a severe heat wave. And it is expected that the temperature will reach 48 degrees Celsius in the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, “and it may be the highest temperatures recorded in Europe,” according to the European Space Agency.
Greece is also witnessing a severe heat wave, as the Minister of Culture announced that the famous Acropolis landmark in the capital, Athens, which records the largest number of visitors in the country, will be closed on Friday at the height of the heat during the day, and most likely Saturday.
North Africa is also affected by the heat. In Morocco, which has been witnessing frequent waves of heat since the beginning of summer, a red alert for heat has been issued in several provinces.
Some regions of China, including the capital, Beijing, are also suffering from a severe heat wave. One of the most prominent electricity companies in the country announced that it had set a record level in daily electricity generation on Monday due to the increase in demand associated with the high temperatures.
Globally, June was the hottest month ever, according to the European agency Copernicus and the American agencies NASA and NOAA. Also, the first week of July was the hottest recorded, according to preliminary data from the World Meteorological Organization.
The organization stated that heat is one of the most dangerous extreme weather phenomena. Last summer, high temperatures in Europe alone caused more than 60,000 deaths, according to a recent study.
But these extreme weather events, which are often caused by climate change, “are unfortunately becoming the new normal,” said Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization, in a statement.
The cyclical El Niño weather phenomenon, which usually leads to higher global temperatures, also exacerbates the situation.
In the United States, the summer has so far been marked by a string of natural disasters. Smoke from wildfires in Canada, where more than 500 fires remain out of control, led to heavy air pollution across the entire northeastern United States in June.
The northeastern state of Vermont also experienced catastrophic flooding this week. Scientists report that climate warming may also contribute to an increase in the frequency and intensity of precipitation through an increase in water vapor in the atmosphere.
Also, for weeks, the south of the country has been facing a heat wave.
This weekend, the heat in California’s Death Valley could equal or even exceed the hottest air temperature ever reliably measured on Earth, says climatologist Daniel Swain of the University of California, Los Angeles.
Officially, the World Meteorological Organization has set the absolute world record at 56.7 degrees Celsius. However, this level was recorded in Death Valley in 1913, and many meteorologists do not consider it reliable, as explained by the scientist, who prefers to adopt the number of 54.4 degrees Celsius recorded in the same place in 2020 and 2021.
The oceans are not immune from the heat either.
In South Florida in the southeastern United States, the water temperature near the coast exceeds 32 degrees Celsius, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Monitoring Agency (NOAA).
The World Meteorological Organization said that the surface temperature of the Mediterranean waters “will be very high in the coming days and weeks” and will sometimes exceed 30 degrees Celsius, with a rise of more than 4 degrees Celsius above the average in large areas to the west of this sea.
Marine heatwaves have devastating effects on the species that live there, their persistence and migrations, with repercussions on fishing activity as well.
At the other end of the globe, Antarctic ice floes reached their lowest point in June.
Compared to the pre-industrial era, the world is witnessing a rise in temperature of about 1.2 degrees due to human activity, especially the use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas).
The head of the World Meteorological Organization says the current heat waves underscore “the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible.”
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