What's Behind The Record Heat?

What's Behind The Record Heat ? - Heat is beating records around the country: the first five months of 2012 have been the hottest on record in the contiguous United States. And that's not including June, when 164 all-time high temperature records were tied or broken around the country, according to government records.

That's unusual, since the most intense heat usually comes in July and August for much of the country, said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist with National Climatic Data Center. For example, only 47 all-time high records were tied or broken in June of last year. 

Also, more than 40,000 daily heat records have been broken around the country so far this year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Compare that with last year —the ninth warmest on record — when only 25,000 daily records had been set by this date. 

In other words, the heat really is that bad. And behind the records is a set of weather and climate conditions that is keeping the heat locked in over the country, with little respite in sight.

Can't stand the heat

The warm summer follows an unusually warm winter, which was the hottest and driest that the western United States has ever seen since records have been kept, said Jeff Weber, a scientist with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

The heat burning up the country right now is due in part to a persistent high pressure system, also called a heat ridge or dome, which parked itself over the mountain west, and has now shifted east into the Midwest and Southeast. The system is unfortunately stuck in place, Weber said, because of a slowdown of the North Atlantic Oscillation, a climate pattern that pulls weather patterns eastward across the country.

This "blocking" of the Atlantic has caused the jet stream, which normally ferries air from west to east across the United States, to buckle and trap heat in the Midwest and Southeast, Weber told OurAmazingPlanet.

High and dry

That's not unusual in the summer, said National Weather Service meteorologist Greg Carbin. But this pattern of hot air does cover a broader area than usual, and the total amount of hot air is greater, stretching higher up in the atmosphere than normal, he said.

Dry soils, in part a product of the dry winter, exacerbate the heat. "If the soils were wetter, more energy would be absorbed by the water and the daily high temperatures wouldn't be as warm," Crouch told OurAmazingPlanet. For example, southern Georgia and Florida, drenched by Tropical Storm Debby, haven't been as hot as areas to the north in the last week or so.

Unfortunately, the heat doesn't look likely to dissipate soon, with the National Weather Service expecting warmer-than-usual temperatures to continue for the remainder of the summer across much of the country. The southwest and Rocky Mountains could be in for a reprieve soon, however, thanks to the beginning of the North American monsoon, which is predicted to start bringing moisture and cooler temperatures into the area later this week, Weber said.

Climate change?

The early heat waves of summer — following higher temperatures in spring and winter — could also be part of a pattern of climate change.

"It's consistent with what we'd expect in a warming climate, but it's hard to quantify any effect climate change might have on an individual event like this heat wave," Crouch said. 

While only one heat wave cannot by itself be linked to climate change, a significant increase in these types of events over time could be a hallmark of a warming planet. "An increasing frequency of heat waves —that's one aspect of climate change you can point to," Carbin said.

Over the past few years, daily record high temperatures have been outpacing daily record lows by 2-to-1 on average, according to the website Climate Central. A 2009 study found that if the climate were not warming, that ratio would be expected to be even. So far this year, there have been 40,113 high temperature records set or tied, compared with just 5,835 cold records, a ratio of about 7-to-1.

"This could be a harbinger of things to come," Weber said. ( LiveScience.com )

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Hot or Not? US Heat Wave Mapped from Space

Hot or Not ? US Heat Wave Mapped from Space - Suffering in the summer heat? You're not alone. In a new map made using data compiled by a NASA satellite, a heat wave can be seen spreading across the country, hitting the Great Plains particularly hard. 

In the past week, 1,011 records have been broken around the country, including 251 new daily high temperature records on Tuesday (June 26), according to the Associated Press. The week before that, 77 record-high temperatures were tied or beaten. What's more, 26 states and Washington, D.C., are under some kind of heat advisory today (June 29).

This map shows the heat wave currently sweeping across the United States with temperatures taken by a NASA satellite on June 26, 2012.

The extreme heat, combined with a dry winter and spring, has helped spawn a number of wildfires raging across the West. Many states with the highest temperatures have had more blazes. Colorado experienced the brunt of the heat wave earlier this week and had eight large wildfires burning as of today. Wyoming and Utah — other states that have seen unusually hot weather — together had nine wildfires burning.

The map was made using surface temperatures nationwide from June 17-24, which were measured by NASA's Aqua satellite. These temperatures were then compared with the average over the same eight days from 2000-2011. Areas with warmer-than-average temperatures are shown in red, near-normal temperatures are white, and cooler conditions are blue.

So what's with the extreme heat? This heat wave, like all major weather events, has its direct cause in a complex set of atmospheric conditions that produce short-term weather. However, weather occurs within the broader context of the climate, and many scientists agree that global warming has made it more likely that heat waves of this magnitude will occur.

This year has been extreme in terms of heat and dryness, as was 2002 (a record-breaking year for fires in Colorado). So far, 2012's weather looks very similar to the weather of 1910. That year, spring was warm and dry, which fed into a hellish fire season. Among the blazes was the Great Fire of 1910, also known as "the Big Burn," which destroyed 3 million acres of forest in Washington, Idaho and Montana. ( LiveScience.com )

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Entire Pacific nation could one day move to Fiji

Entire Pacific nation could one day move to Fiji - Fearing that climate change could wipe out their entire Pacific archipelago, the leaders of Kiribati are considering an unusual backup plan: moving the populace to Fiji.

Kiribati President Anote Tong told The Associated Press on Friday that his Cabinet this week endorsed a plan to buy nearly 6,000 acres on Fiji's main island, Viti Levu. He said the fertile land, being sold by a church group for about $9.6 million, could provide an insurance policy for Kiribati's entire population of 103,000, though he hopes it will never be necessary for everyone to leave.

FILE - In this March 30, 2004 file photo, Tarawa atoll, Kiribati, is seen in an aerial view. Fearing that climate change could wipe out their entire Pacific archipelago, the leaders of Kiribati are considering an unusual backup plan: moving the populace to Fiji. Kiribati President Anote Tong told The Associated Press on Friday, March 9, 2012 that his Cabinet this week endorsed a plan to buy nearly 6,000 acres on Fiji's main island, Viti Levu. He said the fertile land, being sold by a church group for about $9.6 million, could provide an insurance policy for Kiribati's entire population of 103,000, though he hopes it will never be necessary for everyone to leave. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)

"We would hope not to put everyone on one piece of land, but if it became absolutely necessary, yes, we could do it," Tong said. "It wouldn't be for me, personally, but would apply more to a younger generation. For them, moving won't be a matter of choice. It's basically going to be a matter of survival."

Kiribati, which straddles the equator near the international date line, has found itself at the leading edge of the debate on climate change because many of its atolls rise just a few feet above sea level.

Tong said some villages have already moved and there have been increasing instances of sea water contaminating the island's underground fresh water, which remains vital for trees and crops. He said changing rainfall, tidal and storm patterns pose as least as much threat as ocean levels, which so far have risen only slightly.

Some scientists have estimated the current level of sea rise in the Pacific at about 2 millimeters (0.1 inches) per year. Many scientists expect that rate to accelerate due to climate change.

Fiji, home to about 850,000 people, is about 1,400 miles south of Kiribati. But just what people there think about potentially providing a home for thousands of their neighbors remains unclear. Tong said he's awaiting full parliamentary approval for the land purchase, which he expects in April, before discussing the plan formally with Fijian officials.

Sharon Smith-Johns, a spokeswoman for the Fijian government, said several agencies are studying Kiribati's plans and the government will release a formal statement next week.

Kiribati, which was known as the Gilbert Islands when it was a British colony, has been an independent nation since 1979.

Tong has been considering other unusual options to combat climate change, including shoring up some Kiribati islands with sea walls and even building a floating island. He said this week that the latter option would likely prove too expensive, but that he hopes reinforcing some islands will ensure that Kiribati continues to exist in some form even in a worst-case scenario.

"We're trying to secure the future of our people," he said. "The international community needs to be addressing this problem more."

Tong said he hopes that the Fiji land will represent just one of several options for relocating people. He pointed out that the land is three times larger than the atoll of Tarawa, currently home to more than half of Kiribati's population.

Although like much of the Pacific, Kiribati is poor — its annual GDP per person is just $1,600 — Tong said the country has plenty of foreign reserves to draw from for the land purchase. The money, he said, comes from phosphate mining on the archipelago in the 1970s. ( Associated Press )

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Corals Moving North to Escape Warming

Corals Moving North to Escape Warming - Corals may be dying in tropical areas, but now it appears they are expanding their range poleward, scientists find.

Corals are critical to ocean life, forming reefs that are home to a dazzling array of species. Despite occupying less than 1 percent of the ocean floor — an area about half the size of France — temperate and tropical reefs provide a home for as much as 25 percent of the world's marine species. Only tropical rain forests can compete with the sheer concentration of biodiversity found in coral reefs.

Unfortunately, corals are especially vulnerable to changes in temperature. As the oceans warm due to Earth's changing climate, corals are dying in tropical areas where the warm waters cause them to expel the symbiotic algae that provide them with nutrients — a process called bleaching.

However, this warming could give corals opportunities as well. Scientists find that as temperatures in higher latitudes rise, coral are expanding poleward.

Geographer Hiroya Yamano, at the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba, Japan, and his colleagues investigated 80 years of national records from temperate areas around Japan. Wintertime sea surface temperatures rose by as much as 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit (2.4 degrees Celsius) in those sites during that period.

The scientists found that four of the nine coral species they studied in these areas in the Northern Hemisphere expanded their range northward since the 1930s as quickly as 8.7 miles (14 kilometers) per year. None of the coral species went south toward the tropics.

"I find the speed — 14 kilometers per year — is stunning," Yamano told OurAmazingPlanet.

These findings might be good news for corals, "but for corals only," Yamano said. Other research suggests that warming waters might spur exotic species to invade new areas, which could negatively impact native marine species.

"Further, even if range expansion of corals does occur, the amount of dying corals in tropical areas may be much greater than the new settlements in the temperate regions," Yamano added.

Yamano added this research only looked at occurrence of corals, not at their abundance. The team will launch a monitoring program to examine settlement and growth of corals at a number of sites to get a better picture of how corals are shifting, he said.

Yamano and his colleagues Kaoru Sugihara and Keiichi Nomura detailed their findings online Feb. 17 in the journal Geophysical Review Letters. ( LiveScience.com )

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