Richard Killmer: The climate crisis and the heat waves
Phoenix has beaten its record. In 2023, there were 31 days of 110 degrees or higher.
Jack Healy is a reporter for the New York Times who lives in Phoenix. He wrote that “Summers in Phoenix are now a brutal endurance match” and adds that “in triple-digit heat, monkey bars singe children’s hands, water bottles warp and seatbelts feel like hot irons. Devoted runners strap on headlamps to go jogging at 4 a.m., when it is still only 90 degrees, then come home drenched in sweat and promptly roll down the sun shutters.”
As Phoenix was breaking records, there were heat advisories from California to South Florida. Other nations were experiencing crazy high temperatures like 110 degrees in Seville, Spain; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and Marrakesh, Morocco. In places like Kuwait City and Basra, Iraq, it’s not uncommon for the heat index to reach 125 degrees in the morning.
This summer we have been aware of heat domes which occur when an area of high-pressure stays over a region for days and weeks. It traps warm air, just like a lid on a pot, for an extended period. The longer that air remains trapped, the more the sun works to heat the air, producing warmer conditions with every passing day.
Does climate change play a role? Though scientists in the past have been uncomfortable tying any particular weather event to climate change, many scientists are now willing to do so. A collaboration of scientists from the UK, Netherlands, the U.S., and other countries, called the World Weather Attribution Initiative, have been able to provide evidence that a particular event is caused by climate change.
The life-threatening heat waves that have baked U.S. southern states and caused scorching European wildfires in recent weeks, would be "virtually impossible" without the influence of human-caused climate change, the World Weather Attribution Initiative reported recently. Global warming, they said, also made China's recent record-setting heat wave 50 times more likely.
But does climate change affect everyone the same? In cities, not everyone experiences the same temperatures. There are hot spots with some people experiencing more heat than others. The Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory released a new study that showed that the average Black resident is exposed to air that is warmer by 0.28 degrees Celsius relative to the city average. In contrast, the average white urban resident lives where the temperature is cooler by 0.22 degrees Celsius relative to the same average.
The new work, published last week in the journal One Earth, involved a two-part effort. The study’s authors aimed to produce a more useful nationwide description of urban heat stress showing how human bodies respond to outdoor heat. The study also shows which populations are exposed to it.
The results showed that 94% live in cities where summertime peak heat stress exposure disproportionately burdens the poor.
The study concludes that people who now live within historically redlined neighborhoods, where loan applicants were once denied on racially discriminatory grounds, would be exposed to higher outdoor heat stress than their neighbors living in originally non-redlined parts of the city.
If the temperature of the human body is raised six or seven degrees, physiological consequences can happen. Cellular processes break down, the heart is taxed, and organs begin to fail.
This disparity results from such realities as hard, dry surfaces such as roofs, sidewalks, roads, buildings, and parking lots. These surfaces offer minimal shade and moisture compared to natural landscapes which can lead to higher temperatures. Moreover, the lack of green spaces in these urban areas further exacerbates the problem. The absence of vegetation prevents the cooling effect that greenery provides.
Heat domes and heat waves are very serious problems. In Texas, 10 residents of Laredo died from heat-related illnesses between June 15 and July 3 of this year. “People are used to being without air conditioning, the city’s medical examiner told the New York Times. “But it was just too hot, and we lost a lot of people because of it.”
— Rev. Richard Killmer is a retired Presbyterian minister who lives in Grand Rapids. Anders Corey, Richard’s grandson, is a rising senior at Bates College.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Richard Killmer: The climate crisis and the heat waves
