Heat waves are the number one cause of weather-related deaths in the United States and alarmingly, in a recent research done by scientists at the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS) based at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (UM) and other colleagues, human-caused climate change has been determined to be the drive behind more extreme summer heat waves in the western US, including California and the Southwest as early as 2020.
They also found that human-caused climate change will be a dominant driver for heat wave occurrences in the Great Lakes region and the Northern and Southern Plains by 2030, 2050 and 2070 respectively.
Increasing carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions in the atmosphere, plus an ever-increasing population have been deemed the major causes of human-caused climate change.
Understanding the driving forces behind the projected increase in occurrence and severity of heat waves is crucial for public health security and necessary for communities to develop extreme heat mitigation strategies, says author Hosmay Lopez, a CIMAS meteorologist based at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic Meteorological Laboratory, and colleagues.
