Over 144 Million Americans Placed Under Excessive Heat Advisories This Week
The US is currently experiencing higher-than-usual temperatures, leading to over 144 million Americans being placed under some level of heat advisory, according to heat.gov. Within the past decade, the summers have been getting consistently hotter fueled by climate change. For this summer, forecasters are predicting no real relief in sight anytime soon, according to USA Today.
AccuWeather long-range meteorologist Paul Pastelok recently spoke to USA Today about these above average temperatures and the future heat waves America will likely experience into the fall season.
“I don’t see any drastic change in the weather pattern at this point.”
The National Weather Service stated: “Near all-time high temperature record heat will continue over portions of the Southwest this week. This long-duration heat wave remains extremely dangerous and deadly if not taken seriously.”
Pastelok said a “large, dominant area of high pressure is responsible for the ongoing heat in the West, which will spread into the central U.S. by next week. Air sinks underneath high-pressure areas, preventing cooling clouds and rain from forming.”
This means that a majority of the US will continue to experience high heat levels into next week.
The federal Climate Prediction Center showed forecast maps that signified above-average temperatures in the coming weeks.
According to the prediction center, the weather pattern for next week “favors above-normal temperatures for nearly the entire continental U.S. and Hawaii. The strongest chances for above-normal temperatures are in the Southeast and the northern Intermountain West.”
“June was the 13th straight month of record-warm temperatures for the planet,” according to data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service. “That means every month for more than a year has been the warmest ever recorded. And 2023 was the hottest summer in 2,000 years,” a study found.
Unusually warm temperatures on both coasts are getting a boost from climate change, meteorologists Jeff Masters and Bob Henson said on the Yale Climate Connections blog.
“Extreme heat expected today across swaths of the West and the mid-Atlantic was made 400% more likely by climate change, according to an analysis by Climate Central, a nonprofit research group,” the meteorologists wrote.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
