A new study has found that heat waves have been increasing in intensity and frequency in most parts of the world since the 1950s.
Published Friday in the journal Nature Communications, researchers discovered that over the past 70 years, the total number of heat wave days worldwide was increasing and that all heat waves were lengthening.
“The downtime is up,” Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, lead author of the study working at the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Climate Extremes, told The Guardian. “The dramatic region-by-region change in the heat waves we’ve witnessed, and the rapid increase in the number of these events, are unequivocal indicators that global warming is with us and accelerating.”
Last week parts of London were hit with record warmth. Scientists are increasingly alarmed by very high temperatures in the Arctic. A July 4 heat wave is slated to hit a large swath of the United States, according to forecasters.
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Heat waves have become more frequent and intense in the past 70 years, a new study reveals.
(AP Photo / Michael Probst)
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“The first half of July appears to have much higher than normal temperatures, with fairly high probabilities, starting around July 4 or slightly earlier,” Jon Gottschalck, chief of the Operational Prediction Branch at the Service’s Climate Prediction Center National Weather, he told NBC News.
The heat explosion could create a “ring of fire” pattern, in which storms circulating around the edges of the heat dome generate powerful storms, particularly over the northern plains, Gottschalk told the network.
According to The Guardian, the most severe heat wave to hit the Mediterranean was in the summer of 2003, when it is believed that there were 70,000 deaths in Europe due to extreme heat. That season also caused billions of dollars in damage to forests and agriculture.
