California Free Press

US Breaks Summer Heat Record Set During Dust Bowl in 1936: NOAA

The United States in June, July, and August was the hottest since records began, including the Dust Bowl summer of 1936. The combination of high temperatures with drought in some regions and high precipitation in others, led to a summer of weather extremes all closely tied to global warming and the climate emergency. (Photo: iStock/Getty)

 

"I wondered if I would live to see one of America's most iconic weather records fall—the record for hottest summer, set in the great Dust Bowl of 1936," said one meteorologist. "Finally, in 2021, the record has fallen."

 

Jon Queally

September 10, 2021

The United States just experienced the hottest summer ever, breaking the record set in 1936 when the Dust Bowl Era took hold amid extreme heat, drought, crop failures that upended the country.

According to data and new analysis released Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):

During meteorological summer (June-August), the average temperature for the Lower 48 was 74.0°F, 2.6°F above average, nominally eclipsing the extreme heat of the Dust Bowl in 1936 by nearly 0.01°F and essentially tying 1936 for the warmest summer on record. A record 18.4 percent of the contiguous U.S. experienced record-warm temperatures for this season. For August, the contiguous U.S. average temperature was also 74.0°F, 1.9°F above the 20th-century average and ranked as the 14th-warmest August on record. For the year to date, the contiguous U.S. temperature was 55.6°F, 1.8°F above the 20th-century average, ranking 13th warmest in the January-August record.

With temperatures extreme in the U.S. in June, July, and August, precipitation was also high. The NOAA data revealed that the total rainfall across the lower 48 states "was 9.48 inches, 1.16 inches above average, ranking eighth wettest in the historical record. The August precipitation total for the contiguous U.S. was 3.09 inches, 0.47 inch above average, ranking 14th wettest in the 127-year period of record."

The combination of high temperatures with drought in some regions and high precipitation in others led to a summer of weather extremes all closely tied to global warming and the climate emergency. As the agency's report notes:

Devastating flash flooding and fatalities resulted from multiple events during August including Tropical Storm Fred in western North Carolina, convective flooding from a complex of storms across middle Tennessee, Hurricane Ida across Louisiana and portions of the Northeast in early September and from Tropical Storm Henri, also across parts of the Northeast. With 35 fatalities accounted for during August*, it was the deadliest month for flooding across the U.S. since Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

Wildfires continued to spread across the western U.S. during August as the Dixie Fire in north-central California became the second-largest fire in the state’s history. The Caldor Fire also in California grew rapidly during August, threatening South Lake Tahoe communities. Air quality remained a concern across the U.S. as ash and fine particulates from the many wildfires obscured the skies.

Meteorologist and climate expert Jeff Masters expressed awe at the record-setting heat documented in NOAA's latest findings.

"When I began my career as a meteorologist 40 years ago," Masters tweeted Thursday, "I wondered if I would live to see one of America's most iconic weather records fall—the record for hottest summer, set in the great Dust Bowl of 1936. Finally, in 2021, the record has fallen."

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Off the Top of My Head

Good on President Biden for Using His Visit to the Flood Zones to Give a Tutorial on Climate Change

by John Lawrence

Previously, after a natural disaster no one mentioned climate change. There was much bemoaning and commiserating, but Biden took a different tack. He lectured the American people about climate change and how it contributed to the disasters that had befallen the unfortunate. What's more he said they would continue and get worse unless we undertake to do something about it. No more attributing the disasters to one in 500 year events. That language is totally out the window. No more statements like "I've never seen anything like this my entire life." Get used to it. People are going to see a lot more of these climate disasters from now on. As President Biden said, we can't prevent these disasters from happening on a regular basis, but we can do something about them getting a lot worse. Meanwhile the fossil fuel industry is running ads on TV about how wonderful the oil and gas industry is, and they are lobbying their evil little hearts out to get politicians on their side.

“The nation and the world are in peril,” President Biden said after touring storm damage in New York and Jersey. “And that’s not hyperbole. That is a fact.”

"Folks — and we have to take some bold action now to tackle the accelerating effects of climate. If we don’t act — now I’m going to be heading, as Chuck knows, as the senator knows, I’m going to be heading from here to Glasgow, Scotland, for the COP meeting [United Nations Climate Change Conference], which is all the nations of the world getting together to decide what we are going to do about climate change. And John Kerry, the former secretary of state, is leading our effort, putting it together.

"We are determined, we are determined that we are going to deal with climate change and have zero emissions, net emissions by 2050. By 2020 [sic] (he meant 2030), make sure all our electricity is zero emissions. We’re going to be able to do these things. But we’ve got to move. We’ve got to move. And we’ve got to move the rest of the world. It’s not just the United States of America.

"And so, folks, this summer alone, communities with over 100 million Americans — 100 million Americans call home — have been struck by extreme weather. One in every three Americans has been victimized by severe weather. The hurricanes along the Gulf, the East Coast, up through this community. And I saw the human and physical cost firsthand, as I said, in Louisiana.

"And, folks, the evidence is clear. Climate change poses an existential threat to our lives, to our economy, and the threat is here, it’s not going to get any better. The question: Can it get worse? We can stop it from getting worse.

"And when I talk about building back better — and Chuck is fighting for my program, for our program on the Hill — when I talk about building back better, I mean you can’t build to what it was before this last storm. You got to build better so that if the storm occurred again, there would be no damage. There would be.

"But that’s not going to stop us, though, because if we just do that, it’s just going to get worse and worse and worse. Because the storms are going to get worse and worse and worse. And so, folks, we’ve got to listen to the scientists and the economists and the national security experts. They all tell us this is code red.

"The nation and the world are in peril. And that’s not hyperbole. That is a fact. They’ve been warning us the extreme weather would get more extreme over the decade, and we’re living in it real time now."

Biden is telling it like it is. The American people are in for a lot more of these climate disasters, and we can't stop them immediately. It's going to take decades to get this problem under control, and that's only if we go full steam ahead by taking measures to get it under control. Meanwhile, there are measures which can be taken to mitigate the costs both human and financial from these climate disasters. People must move out of flood plains and areas prone to forest fires. We must underground utilities so that the power doesn't go out during hurricanes and wildfires. That goes for cell phones and cable TV too. People have to have secure means of communication even during a climate disaster. Building codes need to be upgraded. Water management needs to improve so that torrential rains do not just become runoff that turns into floods. That water is precious and needs to be transported to parts of the country that are in more or less perpetual drought. The power grid needs to be hardened. Transportation needs to be electrified. Power generation needs to use renewable sources, and advanced nuclear needs to be developed. Ways of making steel and concrete need to be developed that don't use fossil fuels and the methods of doing so need to be scaled up and spread throughout the whole world. Agriculture needs to be made organic and factory farms eliminated. It's not enough for the US and the developed world to do the right things. Green infrastructure must be developed and spread to the whole world. We must partner with China in a Green Belt and Road Initiative. They are very advanced in building infrastructure throughout the world. While the US has been fighting needless wars, China has been building infrastructure albeit not green infrastructure. From now on coal fired power plants in India and China need to be eliminated and replaced with renewable energy and advanced nuclear power generation.

Off the Top of My Head

Living With Temps Over 120º For Months With No AC

by John Lawrence, September23, 2019

That's what it's like in Jacobabad, Pakistan. And then there are the electricity blackouts lasting as long as 12 hours. In Turbat, Pakistan the temperature reached 128.7º on May 28, 2017. Most people in these poor cities cannot afford air conditioners. Probably the rich can. Resting under a shade tree is an option, but most of the shade trees have been chopped down for firewood. You can't work in these conditions. When the air temperature exceeds the human body temperature of 98.6º, the only way to keep from overheating (heatstroke) is to sweat. But when the humidity is also high, the air is already saturated with moisture so sweating is less effective.

To add injury to injury in many cities in the world's heat belt, there is little or no water, certainly no effective system to deliver it. A flushed toilet uses up precious water so people urinate and defecate outside rather than flush into a nonexistent sewage system. Of course none of this reaches the mass media here in the US which is focused not on the world but on tweets here at home especially those of the tweeter-in-chief. His constituents could care less what happens in Pakistan. Their only concern is that ISIS, al-Qaeda and Boko Haram don't start up again, and, if they do, we will send American troops, planes and drones to strike them down.

The US, as the biggest industrialized mass consumer nation, is largely responsible for the century long spewing of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere which has caused these abnormal and extreme weather situations which so far have mainly affected the poor in other parts of the world. Of course, the US as a nation takes no responsibility for this. The mass migration of climate change refugees has already begun. Hot and dry weather in the Middle East has dried up the Tigris-Euphrates river basin so that subsistence level farmers migrate to the already overpopulated cities causing regional instability. The old adage that it's not the heat that kills you, it's the humidity, turns out to be true. You can survive 100º temps for days at a time as long as the humidity stays below 50%. By 2100 74% of the population will experience that deadly combination according to some studies. The combination of heat and humidity has reduced the number of days that workers can work outside, thus diminishing their livelihoods.

These excessive temperatures can be mitigated by planting more trees. The micro climate created by a few shade trees can reduce ambient temperatures under them by as much as 9º F. Trees also draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere thus mitigating climate change. There are other ways too. Creating an infrastructure where piped water and adequate sewage systems are universal, where air conditioning is universal, where reliable electric grids are universal could alleviate much of the human suffering which is otherwise in store for the human race mostly in poor countries which will then send their refugees streaming into more advanced nations.

In Houston this year massive flooding precipitated by as much as 40 inches of rain in a couple of days destroyed much of the city 2 years after Hurricane Harvey destroyed much of the city. Harvey caused $125 billion in damage. How much will this tropical storm Imelda (not even a hurricane) cost? Will people have to rebuild every couple of years or so? Imelda has dropped 60 inches of rain in a couple of days. Imelda dropped 4 inches of rain in an hour in some areas, double what Harvey dropped in an hour. Yet when people are interviewed for TV news they will never attribute their misfortunes to climate change. They will just say things like "I've never seen anything like it" except that they have - two years ago.

Some areas of the world are simply a lost cause already. That's why so many people are leaving those areas and migrating. The situation will only get worse in years to come. The Caribbean is a disaster zone, and rather than rebuilding, smart people are only getting out and moving elsewhere. After Harvey, more than 91,000 Texans filed flood insurance claims, and FEMA has paid an estimated $8.8 billion for those claims. But FEMA's budget is limited. In fact it's a political football. According to statistics from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, over the past several decades, the government responded to roughly six disasters a year that caused $1 billion each in damages. Between 2014-2018, however, that number spiked to 13 disasters a year. Now Trump doesn't want any more funds allocated to help Puerto Rico.

It's obvious that people shouldn't rebuild in flood plains. Those optimistic people who think that just because they've experienced a 1000 year flood, there won't be another one for another 1000 years are just wrong. They will probably get a 10,000 year flood next year. Every one of these calamities is the result of climate change, but many don't want to admit it when even the President of the US is a climate change denier. Will it come down to whichever congressional districts have the most influential legislators as to who gets help and who doesn't?

The US needs to start remedying the effects of climate change in other parts of the world rather than trying to control them with its military. That policy will only make it seem more attractive to local residents there to support indigenous groups opposed to the US, so-called terrorist groups. Lately, the definition of a terrorist has change. A terrorist is any group who doesn't agree with the policies of the US and is fighting back. Anyone on the other side of the line dividing the US and its allies with Russia, China, Iran and their allies is a terrorist by definition. A terrorist no longer is someone that wants to blow up buildings in the US, but anyone who objects to US policies with regard to the rest of the world.

However, when it comes to climate change, we are all in this together so we better make peace and common cause with the rest of the world's peoples. The vengeance Mother Nature is taking out shows no preference to any nation so the nations of the world better band together instead of squabbling among themselves over small potatoes.