Daily temperature records will tumble as sizzling early season heat from a summerlike heat dome sends thermometers skyrocketing into the triple digits in parts of California and the West this week.
The official start of summer is just a few weeks away, but it will feel like July in much of the West as temperatures climb 20 degrees or more above average, the highest temperatures of the year so far for many locations.
Excessive heat warnings are in effect for more than 17 million people in California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona this week. The warnings are the most extreme form of heat alert issued by the National Weather Service and are used when widespread, dangerous heat is expected.
The soaring temperatures are being caused by a heat dome, a large area of high pressure that parks over an area, traps air and heats it with abundant sunshine for days or weeks. The resulting heat becomes more intense the longer a heat dome lasts.
Yes, absolutely, you are right. The comments in this thread and elsewhere are that Earth will be fine. Our current trajectory doesn’t bode well for that assertion.
Earth will be fine. This isn’t the first time global warming has happened, and life survived that and many other mass extinction events. Most larger animals won’t survive, but enough would for life to keep going.
Without humans pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the earth will eventually return to normal. It might take several million years, but that’s nothing considering there’s like 4b years before the sun gets big enough to destroy everything.
Thank you for the response. This isn’t my field of study but my Astronomy professor back in college pointed to Venus as a possible outcome for Earth if we continued with our current emissions. I know atmospheric CO2 levels in the past were much higher on Earth but I’m truthfully not sure I understand what mechanisms Earth has that Venus lacked. I’m not trying to argue the point; really, I just want to learn.
Lastly, I love your username. It sounds delightful.
Venus has an atmosphere that’s 96.5% CO2. For comparison, earth’s atmosphere has 0.04% CO2.
Now, earth will likely see an increase in that number, and surface conditions will get a lot worse, but humans will be dead long before we even get close to venus.
Life is very tenacious, so it’s highly unlikely that humans will wipe it out completely with climate change.
At the least extremophiles (organisms that exist in conditions that life shouldn’t be able to exist in, like deep sea volcanic vents) will survive, and evolution will do it’s thing again.
Working to combat climate change has nothing to do with saving the earth as a whole; it’s too save the conditions that are favorable for us to survive in.
Got it. Climate change, total nuclear exchange, and complete desertification is needed.
/s
Earth will. We and the majority of the current forms of life not so much. The earth has been considerably hotter than now and with considerably more co2. It’s the rate of change that’s the real issue for both us and most life.