Due to the rapidity of anthropogenic global heating, the world has been caught off guard after decades of red code warnings. We are not ready for extreme summer weather as heat waves increase in frequency and power grids fail.
People concentrated in major cities are vulnerable when the power goes out as fans, air conditioning stops, water purification fails, sewage backs up, and food rots due to loss of refrigeration.
Buenos Aires has lost power due to an intensifying heat wave that can cause a mass mortality event in the city and across Argentina in the coming days. Take a look at the above photo. Notice the apartment units? They become a furnace with a loss of power. People are suffering in the cities, suburbs, and rural areas.
Argentina’s infrastructure is being tested; it is not going well. Temperatures are expected to continue to increase to deadly temperatures, with temperatures up to 122 degrees possible in some areas of the country.
I wrote on the looming heat wave a couple of days ago; the temperatures will be brutal for the agriculture of Argentina.
BUENOS AIRES — Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires was hit by a major power outage on Tuesday that left thousands of homes without electricity amid a heatwave that has seen temperatures soar above 40ºC (104ºF), some of the highest in the world.
Electricity distributors Edenor and Edesur both reported power outages as the high temperatures generated a spike in demand for energy to cool homes and businesses.
The National Electricity Regulatory Entity (ENRE) said Edenor’s power cut had affected 700,000 in the Buenos Aires area. Some 43,400 Edesur customers were left without power after failures of high-voltage lines hit two of its substations.
AySA, which provides drinking water in Buenos Aires, asked the population to optimize the use of water because the outage had also affected its purification system.
"We have to be very careful these days," said Buenos Aires city mayor Horacio Rodriguez Larreta.
Meteorologist Lucas Berengua said that the heat wave was off the charts and could set records in the country.
"This is a heat wave of extraordinary characteristics, with extreme temperature values that will even be analyzed after its completion, and it may generate some historical records for Argentina temperatures and persistence of heat," he said.
For some it raised questions about climate change and more extreme weather. Argentina in recent years has seen unusual amounts of wild fires around its main river delta and the major Parana River drop to a nearly 80-year low water level.
"I was always born here in a temperate climate and I saw how the temperature changed over the years, and it is not what we're used to," said Marta Lorusso, 59, an architect.
"This with the low pressure really kills me, I can't stand it. I drink liters of water and do what I can. And on top of it all, without electricity. I don't know what to do."
ItsSimpleSimon notes in the comments that 55 Celcius is 131 degrees F.
Yale Climate Connections on why heatwaves will be an increasing threat and threat multiplier.
The combination of rising heat and humidity is especially dangerous, as Texas A&M climate scientist Andrew Dessler explained in a Twitter thread. The human body generates heat, and at temperatures above around 82°F, the surrounding air no longer carries away enough heat to keep the body cool. The remaining options to avoid a dangerously overheating body involve air flow across the skin (for example from wind or a fan) or evaporating sweat. And as climate change draws more moisture from the soil into the atmosphere, thus increasing humidity, sweating offers less relief. At 100% relative humidity, the body can’t evaporate any sweat (hence ‘dry heat’ is less uncomfortable because of the body’s ability to cool itself by sweating).
Scientists combine measurements of heat and humidity through what are known as ‘wet bulb’ temperatures. Prolonged wet bulb values close to body temperature (98°F) are not survivable. A 2020 study in Science Advances found that areas near the equator like the Persian Gulf and portions of Central America, India, and Southeast Asia are already very close to this survivability limit, and that the limit will be regularly exceeded if global warming approaches 2.5°C (4.5°F) above pre-industrial temperatures, rendering these regions potentially uninhabitable.
“Our results provide a strong warning: Our rapidly warming climate is bringing us into uncharted territory that has significant consequences for health, well-being, and livelihoods,” the authors of the new attribution study concluded. “Greenhouse gas mitigation goals should take into account the increasing risks associated with unprecedented climate conditions if warming would be allowed to continue.”
H/T Scott Duncan partial quote for the title
There is a lot of discussion on heatwaves and the power grid in the below video.