In summer 2022, record-breaking heat waves in California and elsewhere have triggered a stream of health alerts and warnings, strained power grids, and left millions of the most vulnerable Americans sweating through uncomfortable and sometimes deadly conditions.
In summer 2022, record-breaking heat waves in California and elsewhere have triggered a stream of health alerts and warnings, strained power grids, and left millions of the most vulnerable Americans sweating through uncomfortable and sometimes deadly conditions.
If trends continue, oppressively hot and humid summers like this one are going to become much more common. That is the key finding from a set of new climate projections conducted by a team of researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and several universities. Colin Raymond, a researcher at JPL, and colleagues used projections from 20 climate models to analyze how much heat stress people across the United States might face between 2075-2099 on the hottest summer days compared to observed norms between 1980 and 2005.
“If we assume a high-end emissions scenario and we end up with a 3°C to 5°C increase in global temperatures by 2075, what has been the top 1 percent of summer days for heat stress will be happening for a quarter to half of the summer. That’s a huge difference,” said Raymond. “That one oppressively hot day you remember as summer’s worst could well be happening on 30 or even 50 days each summer by 2075.”
Read More at: NASA Earth Observatory
Photo Credit: NASA Earth Observatory
