By Doyle Rice
June 20, 2024
Source: USA Today
Photo Source: Unsplash,
How a heat dome has played a part
According to the World Weather Attribution group, the area has been underneath a large and lingering region of high pressure known as a heat dome, which occurs when hot air is trapped close to the ground and further heated under blue skies and sunshine.
"Whilst heat domes have a well-known mechanism for intensifying heat waves, these past weeks have seen records broken in both daytime and nighttime temperatures in several countries, including Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and in the southwestern US," the group said in a statement.
They also noted that a heat wave such as this one is four times more likely to occur today than it was in the year 2000.
“Unsurprisingly, heat waves are getting deadlier," study co-author Friederike Otto of Imperial College London said.
Otto added that since 2000, in just 24 years, June heat waves in North and Central America have become 1.4 degrees hotter, exposing millions more people to dangerous heat.
What do others say?
Brett Anderson, AccuWeather climate expert and senior meteorologist, said "climate change is clearly playing a role in enhancing this warming."
"As we continue to put more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, these types of extreme heat and drought conditions across the Southwest and Mexico will almost certainly become more common and perhaps even the norm by the end of this century or even much earlier," Anderson said in an e-mail to USA TODAY.
University of Southern California marine studies chair Carly Kenkel, who wasn’t part of the attribution team’s study, told the Associated Press the analysis is “the logical conclusion based on the data.”
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