Climate change may be, by far, the leading driver of this summer’s stifling heat, but three other factors are helping push the mercury to new extremes.
Climate change may be, by far, the leading driver of this summer’s stifling heat, but three other factors are helping push the mercury to new extremes.
The first is the 2022 eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha-apai, an underwater volcano near Tonga, in the South Pacific. Typically, volcanic eruptions unleash sulfur-based aerosols, which block sunlight, cooling the planet, but the Hunga Tonga produced only a small amount of aerosols. At the same time, it vaporized a large volume of seawater. That water vapor, a heat-trapping gas, could raise global temperatures by 0.06 degrees F (more than 0.03 degrees C) over the next several years, according to a recent study.
The second factor is a change in the amount of energy radiating from the sun, which rises and falls ever so slightly every 11 years. At the high point in this cycle, a surge in solar energy warms the Earth by around 0.09 degrees F (0.05 degrees C). The sun is now ramping up to its next peak, expected in 2025.
Read more at: Yale Environment 360
Photo Credit: Death Valley, California via Pixabay
