heat wave – Page 9 – Desdemona Despair

Map showing the heat index in the United States for 30 June 2023. Graphic: The Washington Post

June 30, 2023

Solar power bails out Texas grid during major heat wave – “This is what’s happening with 1 degree Celsius of global average warming. And we’re on track for 3 degrees.”

30 June 2023 (Reuters) – The Texas power grid comfortably met record demand during this week’s heat wave with abundant power supply from wind and solar plants, data from the grid operator showed. The Texas grid is a focus in the United States whenever it is tested by extreme weather after a catastrophic failure in […]

On 27 June 2023, Texas once again braced for a record spike in electricity demand as 110F heat spurred air-conditioning usage. An early heat wave gripped the second most-populous US state, buckling highways, stressing oil refineries and pushing up natural gas prices. At least two deaths were attributed to the searing temperatures and it was only expected to get hotter as the week wears on. It was not a new problem for Texas: The Lone Star State broke power-demand records 11 times in the summer of 2022. Graphic: Bloomberg

June 27, 2023

Texas power demand again forecast to peak amid Summer 2023 heat wave – “Texas is running about 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it did during the 20th century”

26 June 2023 (Reuters) – Texas’ power grid operator on Monday again projected electricity use would break records this week as homes and business cranked up air conditioning amid soaring temperatures. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which operates the grid for more than 26 million customers representing about 90% of the state’s power […]

Meena Tiwari, center, cries standing in front of the body of her son Ashutosh Tiwari, who allegedly died of heat stroke, at the district government hospital, in Ballia district of northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Monday, 19 June 2023. Nearly 170 people have died in the last few days in northern India as searing heat combined with lack of preparedness and resources at local hospitals is resulting in a constantly increasing body count. According to local news reports and health officials in Uttar Pradesh state, 119 people have died and in neighboring Bihar state, government officials say 47 people have died due to heat-related illness. Photo: Rajesh Kumar Singh / AP Photo

June 19, 2023

Days of sweltering heat, power cuts in northern India overwhelm hospitals as death toll climbs – “So many people are dying from the heat that we are not getting a minute’s time to rest. On Sunday, I carried 26 dead bodies.”

By Rajesh Kumar Singh, Piyush Nagpal, and Sibi Arasu 19 June 2023 BALLIA, India (AP News) – A scorching heat wave in two of India’s most populous states has overwhelmed hospitals, filled a morgue to capacity and disrupted power supply, forcing staff to use books to cool patients, as officials investigate the number of deaths that […]

Smoke billows upward from a planned ignition by firefighters tackling the Donnie Creek Complex wildfire south of Fort Nelson, British Columbia, Canada on 3 June 2023. Photo: B.C. Wildfire Service / REUTERS

June 11, 2023

Canada on track for its worst-ever wildfire season in 2023 – “Over the last 20 years, we have never seen such a large area burned so early in the season”

OTTAWA, 5 June 2023 (Reuters) – Canada is on track for its worst-ever year of wildfire destruction as warm and dry conditions are forecast to persist through to the end of the summer after an unprecedented start to the fire season, officials said on Monday. Blazes are burning in nearly all Canadian provinces and territories, […]

Map showing the thermal comfort index in Southeast Asia, averaged over the period 1 April 2023 - 25 May 2023. Thailand saw its hottest day in history at 45.4 degrees Celsius (114 degrees Fahrenheit) on 15 April 2023, while neighboring Laos topped out at 43.5 degrees Celsius (110 degrees Fahrenheit) for two consecutive days in May 2023, and Vietnam’s all-time record was broken in early May 2023 with 44.2 degrees Celsius (112 degrees Fahrenheit). Data: Copernicus Climate Change Service. Graphic: Lou Robinson / CNN

June 11, 2023

A “once-in-200 years” heat wave caught Southeast Asia off guard. Climate change will make them more common.

By Carlotta Dotto, Krystina Shveda, and Lou Robinson 7 June 2023 HONG KONG (CNN) – Every day, countless mopeds crisscross the congested city of Hanoi, in Vietnam, with commuters traveling to work or motorbike taxis dropping off everything from parcels to cooked food and clients. One of them is Phong, 42, who starts his shift […]

Smoke billowed from a fire near the town of Shelburne on 29 May 2023, when an astronaut on the International Space Station took this photograph. By the morning of 31 May 2023, after four days of burning, the fire had scorched 17,000 hectares (66 square miles) near the southern tip of Nova Scotia. It became the largest forest fire in the province’s history, according to CBC Nova Scotia, exceeding the area burned (13,000 hectares) by a fire in Guysborough County over six days in June 1976. Photo: Wanmei Liang / NASA Earth Observatory

June 11, 2023

How climate change factored into Nova Scotia’s wildfires – “All our infrastructure was built for a climate that doesn’t exist anymore”

By Nathan Coleman 7 June 2023 (The Weather Network) – Wildfires raging across Canada have already scorched more than 10 times the land than usual, causing a massive amount of damages in multiple provinces as dangerous air quality lingers overhead. “All our infrastructure was built for a climate that doesn’t exist anymore,” University of Toronto atmospheric physics […]

A worker uses a digital thermometer to record a surface temperature of 42.6°C (108.7°F) in Beijing, China on 15 May 2023. Photo: China Central Television / SCMP

June 3, 2023

Southern China swelters, power grids struggle under “relentless” heatwaves – Pigs, rabbits, and fish dying from searing temperatures – “It’s just been week on week on week of these records being shattered”

By David Kirton 2 June 2023 BEIJING (Reuters) – Heatwaves tormenting parts of southern and eastern China are set to persist through June, putting power grids under strain as air conditioners are turned on full blast at homes, offices and factories in mega-cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen. In the next three days, most of southern […]

Satellite view of the Iberian Peninsula on 11 May 2023 and 11 May 2023. These images, acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, show where green vegetation in May 2022 turned brown by May 2023. The sparse rainfall further parched soils that were already unusually dry in 2022. According to a recent report by Copernicus Climate Change Services, soil moisture across all of Europe in 2022 was the second lowest in the past 50 years. Unseasonable heat exacerbated the prolonged drought. On 26 April 2023, hot air from North Africa swept over southern Spain and pushed the temperature at the Córdoba airport to 38.8°C (101.8°F), the highest April temperature recorded in continental Spain. Photo: Allison Nussbaum / NASA Earth Observatory

May 27, 2023

Drought in Spain spurs largest-ever claim for agricultural insurance – 2023 sees the highest number of fires and the most extensive burned area since 2006

By Akankshita Mukhopadhyay 26 May 2023 (Reinsurance News) – The drought in Spain would be the largest claim ever paid by the Spanish agricultural insurance, according to professional services firm Aon. Agroseguro, the leading agricultural insurance provider in Spain, is bracing for an unprecedented payout of over €300 million ($325 million) in compensations due to […]

A water meter stands in dry wetland in Donana natural park, southwest Spain as unprecedented drought hits the nation in 2023. Photo: Bernat Armangue / Africanews / AP Photo

May 27, 2023

“Murderers” and “criminals”: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists – “It was one of the hardest experiences in social media in my life”

By Laura Paddison 27 May 2023 (CNN) – “Murderers.” “Criminals.” “We are watching you.” These are just a handful of the threats and abuse sent to meteorologists at AEMET, Spain’s national weather agency, in recent months. They come via social media, its website, letters, phone calls – even in the form of graffiti sprayed across […]

a–f, Fraction of population (%; a–c) and absolute population (billion people; d–f) exposed to unprecedented temperatures (MAT ≥29 °C; a,d), left outside the niche due to temperature change only (b,e,) and left outside the niche due to temperature change and demographic change (c,f) for different SSPs. Calculations are based on MAT averaged over the 20-year intervals and population density distribution at the centre year of the corresponding intervals. Data are presented as mean values with the shaded regions corresponding to the 5th–95th percentiles. Graphic: Lenton, et al., 2023 / Nature Sustainability

May 27, 2023

Current climate policies will leave more than a fifth of humanity exposed to dangerously hot temperatures by 2100 – “For every 0.1°C of warming above present levels, about 140 million more people will be exposed to dangerous heat”

By Alex Morrison 22 May 2023 (University of Exeter) – Current climate policies will leave more than a fifth of humanity exposed to dangerously hot temperatures by 2100, new research suggests. Despite the Paris Agreement pledge to keep global warming well below 2°C (compared to pre-industrial levels), current policies are projected to result in 2.7°C warming by the […]