Palm Springs, California, is one of several U.S. cities that have seen record temperatures fall in recent days and weeks.
Mario Tama/Getty Images North America
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Mario Tama/Getty Images North America
When Joe Pascale moved to the desert town of Palm Springs, California, about 17 years ago, it was hot, but in the mornings and evenings there was a break from the heat.
“You could wake up in the morning and it would be relatively cool and you could enjoy being outside, even in the middle of summer,” he said. “The mornings would just be great.”
“It doesn’t exist for us anymore and it’s a huge loss,” he said.
Palm Springs has been breaking temperature records one after another over the past week. The city hit 50 degrees on July 8, the highest temperature ever recorded for that day, according to the National Weather Service.
Last Friday, the city broke its record high temperature, reaching 124 degreesEven early in the morning this week, the temperature was still around 90 or 80 degrees.
Pascale recognizes the link between her increasingly hot city and climate change, caused largely by humans burning fossil fuels.
“Sometimes we feel like we’re shouting into the void,” Pascale says. “There’s a problem we need to address.”
Last year was the hottest year on record globally. Global warming in the United States is faster than the global average, meaning the effects of global warming will be more pronounced.
Arizona, California, Oregon and Nevada have all seen record-breaking heat in recent weeks. And while the heat wave is mostly affecting the West, states like North Carolina and Maryland have also seen record-breaking temperatures fall this summer.
“It’s not subtle,” says Joellen Russell, an oceanographer and climatologist at the University of Arizona, who notes that her city, Tucson, Arizona, also saw a record high temperature fall this week.
“We’re going to continue (breaking temperature records) as long as we continue to increase the amount of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere,” Russell says.
In 2015, at a U.N. conference in Paris, most of the world’s countries agreed to try to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. 1.5 degrees is a threshold that scientists say could trigger more severe consequences of climate change.
As global consumption of fossil fuels continues to rise, it is unlikely – but not impossible – that the world will remain below the 1.5 degree threshold, according to many international scientists.
According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, by June the world had already been at or above 1.5 degrees for 12 consecutive months.
“But a 1.5-degree target is not a magic number,” says Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist and chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit organization.
Even if the world manages to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, new temperature records will continue to fall, Hayhoe warns.
“We scientists have known for a long time – for decades – that as the planet warms, temperature extremes are going to increase,” she says. “Climate change is already affecting the people we love, the places we love, and the things we love.”
The good news is that the world has proven and scalable climate solutions, Russell says.
These include solar and wind power combined with batteries. Last year was the fastest growing year for renewables, according to the International Energy Association.
News Source : www.npr.org
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