"Our imagination for what the impact (heat wave) could be has been completely changed. So many of us saw a career's worth of heat stroke and heat illness in a matter of hours. We began to treat it like a multi-casualty event." Steven Mitchell, Medical Director at Seattle's Harborview Medical Center's emergency department
Global heatings effect on wildfires, drought, heat, and hurricanes are happening earlier and lasting longer.
Below are excerpts from the Union of Concerned Scientists campaign to name the period from May to October as the danger season. Kate Yoder writes in Grist:
Summer has remained mostly the same for a millennium or more. Around the year 900, Old English speakers were already using the word sumor for the warmer months. Some say the word summer is probably close to the version heard 4,000 years ago, when people spoke the prehistoric Indo-European language believed to be the ancestor to many languages spoken across Europe and India today.
But summer isn’t what it used to be. The season is getting so hot that it might be time for a new name: “danger season.”
The phrase, part of a new campaign by the Union of Concerned Scientists, refers to the period from May to October marked by a drumbeat of disasters in the United States. During these months, people across the country still splash in pools and head to the beach but, increasingly, they also suffer through heat waves, flee from wildfires, breathe smoky air, and board up homes as hurricanes approach.
Excerpts below from the Washington Post's must-read, Summer in America is becoming hotter, longer and more dangerous. If you are behind a paywall, you can read the article on MSN.
Scientists say the recent spate of severe summers is a clear change from previous generations. The average summer temperature in the past five years has been 1.7 degrees (0.94 Celsius) warmer than it was from 1971 through 2000, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But some parts of the country have been much harder hit, with the West showing a 2.7 degrees (1.5 Celsius) increase.
“The past few summers, we’ve just seen such a constant parade of one climate-related event after another,” said Kristina Dahl, principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental advocacy group. “This really does strike us as a point where we need to be shifting our thinking about summer and how we are approaching it.”
Summer has always been a turbulent season, a time of checking weather forecasts and watching the skies. And despite the major shifts that have taken place, many people still relish the season. Vacationers still flock to places that now face some degree of wildfire or flood risk. But climate change is increasingly pushing summer to extremes, creating inhospitable conditions and endangering lives.
While these climatic shifts are occurring year-round nationwide — in fact, in many areas, it’s getting warmer faster during other seasons — the summer is often when the effects cascade. The temperatures are higher, so any increase may be felt even more strongly. And people are more likely to spend extended time outside, exposed to the elements.
Across the country, heat waves are arriving more frequently, more intensely and earlier in the year. Nights are warming at a slightly higher rate than days in most parts of the United States, according to the most recent National Climate Assessment, harming people’s ability to cool down after hot days. A Climate Central study found that in just more than half of cities analyzed, high-heat days arrived at least a week earlier, on average, than 50 years ago. Three-fourths of places had more “extremely hot” days.
From Climate Central:
Extremely hot days are on the rise–but the temperature threshold for extreme heat is different across the U.S. A high of 80°F is considered sweltering hot in Fairbanks, AK, but a normal average in Miami. And 100°F is common in Phoenix, but treated as a dangerous heat advisory in New York City. Different locations have different temperature thresholds for defining an “extremely hot day” depending on their climatology. However, with climate change, the U.S. is experiencing more hot days across the board. A look at the numbers: Climate Central analysis looked at 246 U.S. locations and calculated how many more days each year were extremely hot from 1970 to 2021.
Since 1970, 74% (184) of 246 U.S. locations analyzed reported more extremely hot days annually.
About 51% (126) of the locations had at least seven additional extremely hot days annually.
The largest change was in Austin, TX with 43 additional days above 100°F.
What’s the role of climate change in extremely hot days? Climate Central’s new tool, the Climate Shift Index (CSI), allows us for the first time to quantify how human-caused climate change has changed the odds of daily temperatures across the country. Access the tool to find CSI values for your local high and low temperatures for yesterday, today, and the next two days.
I'm out of gas. I am exhausted, but I wanted to share summaries of the United States' increasingly hot summers. Thanks for your patience.