But Arndt added that we wouldn’t be seeing anywhere near record-warm days unless we were in “a warm piece of what will likely be a very warm era” driven by greenhouse gas emissions and the onset of a “robust” El Niño. An El Niño is a temporary natural warming of parts of the central Pacific Ocean that changes weather worldwide and generally makes the planet hotter.
Human-caused climate change is like an upward escalator for global temperatures, and El Nino is like jumping up while standing on that escalator, Arndt said.
The University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer is based on a NOAA computer simulation intended for forecasts that uses satellite data. It is not based on reported observations from the ground. So this unofficial record is effectively using a weather tool that is designed for forecasts, not record-keeping.
Still, the preliminary record stoked fear and indignation within the scientific community.
“Totally unprecedented and terrifying,” Bill McGuire, a famed volcanologist and emeritus professor of Earth sciences at University College London, tweeted Wednesday about the preliminary back-to-back records.
Robert Rohde, lead scientist at Berkeley Earth, a nonprofit research organization that focuses on climate data analysis, said recent extremes have been fueled by El Niño conditions on top of ongoing global warming, adding that, “we may well see a few even warmer days over the next 6 weeks.”
This average temperature may not seem that hot, but it’s the first time in the 44 years of this dataset that the temperature surpassed the 17-degree Celsius mark.
Hotter global average temperatures translate into brutal conditions for people all over the world. In the U.S., heat advisories are in effect this week for more than 30 million people in places including portions of western Oregon, inland far northern California, central New Mexico, Texas, Florida and the coastal Carolinas, according to the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center. Excessive heat warnings are continuing across southern Arizona and California, they said.
When the heat spikes, humans suffer health effects.
“Those hotter temperatures that happen when we get hotter than normal conditions? People aren’t used to that. Their bodies aren’t used to that,” said Erinanne Saffell, the Arizona state climatologist and an expert in extreme weather and climate events.
Saffell added that the risk is already high for the young and old, who are vulnerable to heat even under normal conditions.
“That’s important to understand who might be at risk, making sure people are hydrated, they’re staying cool, and they’re not exerting themselves outside and taking care of those folks around you who might be at risk as well,” she said.
