2023 North America heatwave

[Meatpie]

People gather at Barton Springs Pool on June 21, 2023, in Austin, Texas. The southwestern region of the state has suffered record-breaking 120-degree heat indexes in recent days, with forecasters expecting more of the same.

Starting in May 2023, a brutal heatwave has affected most of North America.

The rolling heatwave marks the latest in a series of recent extreme “heat dome” events that have scorched various parts of the world.

This heat dome was formed by a high-pressure atmospheric system that created a sinking column of warming air that trapped latent heat already absorbed by the landscape, like a sort of lid. Such events typically occur without rain and are cloudless, allowing the sun to bake the surface unhindered, causing temperatures to spike.

“The heat evaporates water and then just heats up the land,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University.

If you have this sort of high-pressure system sitting stationary over a region, you can have these really impressive heatwaves.

Heat domes have long existed in Texas, and elsewhere, and there is some conjecture among scientists as to whether or not the climate crisis is causing more “blocking events” where patches of high pressure are held in place by alterations to a jet stream that normally pushes weather systems from west to east.

“But when these heat domes do happen, they are getting worse, that’s for certain,” said Michael Wehner, a climate and extreme weather expert at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who estimated that the Texas heatwave was made around 2.7C (5F) hotter by human-caused global heating.

Photos: Keeping Cool During Heat Waves

Recent images of people and animals doing what they can to beat the heat

www.theatlantic.com