Mutually worsening heat and drought, both fueled by climate change, are stifling the American West, stoking wildfire fears and straining electrical grids — and the worst is far from over. “We could have two, three, four, five of these heat waves before the end of the summer,” Park Williams, a … [continued]
Dangerously high temperatures are gripping the West, with more to life- and grid-threatening heat expected in the coming days. Phoenix hit at least 113°F over the weekend and temperatures from the Southwest to Northern Rockies are forecast to be 15–25°F above average. Texas officials are already asking customers to conserve … [continued]
Increasingly frequent power failures combined with heatwaves fueled by climate change pose severe, compounding threats to major American cities, new research suggests. The study, published in Environmental Science & Technology, looked at Atlanta, Detroit, and Phoenix and found at least two-thirds of residents in those cities would be vulnerable to … [continued]
A new report looks at how heat and a climate that is getting hotter is endangering the health of the aging US population. This threat is exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Parts of the world are already too hot for humans thanks to climate change. In a new article by NewScientist, I learned of a different way of taking your temperature. It’s called “wet-bulb temperature” (TW), and it measures the heat and humidity taken from a thermometer covered in a water-soaked cloth. If the temperature is higher than 35 degrees Celsius or 95 degrees Fahrenheit TW, the body is unable to cool itself by sweating.
Climate adaptation encompasses a wide array of actions that help people and nature cope with the present-day harms of climate disruption and minimize future harms. Ideally, adaptation allows us to move beyond just surviving the climate crisis to thriving in a fundamentally new world.
In the Lake Apopka region of Florida, a typical August day might yield a high temperature of 92 degrees F, a heat made all the worse by the stifling humidity. The weather is bad enough for office workers who spend most of the day next to an air conditioner. For farm workers, who spend their August picking blueberries outdoors, the heat can be oppressive, even fatal.
The number of days in which extreme heat occurs during the summer have been rising across the US — particularly in the Western states and on the Eastern seaboard — over recent decades, a new study from the Natural Resources Defense Council found.
A sweltering, humid summer day can be brutal for most of us, but for the elderly extreme heat is downright dangerous.
The intense heat wave that’s been gripping much of the western US in recent days has actually forced the cancellation of a number of flights out of Phoenix, Arizona — owing to the simple fact that the Bombardier CRJ aircraft to be used for the flights in question weren’t designed to operate above 118° Fahrenheit.
