A broad swath of the Midwest and eastern U.S. are currently under a heat dome, caused by a high-pressure system in the Earth’s upper atmosphere that compresses the air beneath it, making it expand into a dome shape.
This weekend, Washington D.C., for example, is expected to see temperatures in the high 90s (or highs of about 37 Celsius for our international readers).
The extreme temperatures come as the globe recently concluded a 12-month period in which every month set a temperature record.
“Every summer we get heat waves, and heat waves are getting more extreme and they’re getting more frequent and they’re lasting longer,” said Jonathan Overpeck, dean of the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan.
Much of this summer’s extreme heat is attributable to the impact of climate change, but El Niño has also been a factor, Overpeck said.
Now that El Niño has ended, he said “we’re really looking at the next few months to tell us whether something dramatic is surprising us in the global temperatures.”
“If it starts cooling off, [and] it hasn’t started to do that yet, we can ascribe [these] more unusual temperatures to the El Niño. If it keeps rocketing up, we’ll have to think about why climate change [is] accelerating.”
Read more in a full report at TheHill.com.
