The intense heat plaguing much of the United States is straining the nation’s power grid. Record high temperatures are recorded in China and Europe. Extreme weather is ravaging India, where torrential rain this week has led to deadly landslides.
And there is little relief in sight.
On Thursday, a day after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said last month it was the warmest June on Earth since global temperature records began in 1850, forecasters said August was unlikely to bring a respite, at least in the United States. The bureau predicts unusually high temperatures for most of the country next month, almost everywhere except the northern Great Plains.
Late Thursday night, California’s power grid operator issued an emergency warning urging people to conserve electricity as high temperatures are putting unusual strain on the system. In Phoenix, temperatures reached 116 degrees on Thursday, extending the city’s record streak to 21 consecutive days with temperatures of 110 degrees or higher.
According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, the first two weeks of July were probably the warmest ever recorded on Earth at any time of the year.
Some scientists have suggested that last month’s heat wave was five times more likely and 5 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than it would have been without climate change. While heat waves do occur naturally, the massive highs in June temperatures around the world were very unlikely to have occurred without global warming, said John Nielsen-Gammon, director of the Southern Regional Climate Center.
In Asia, extremely high temperatures accompanied an intense monsoon season that has already claimed more than 100 lives in India, South Korea and Japan, and the full death toll is likely to be significantly higher.
In India, intense heat has given way to heavy rainfall in much of the country, particularly in the Himalayan states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. The torrential downpours have triggered massive landslides and flash floods, killing at least 130 people in the past 26 days in northern India.
An Indian government report in April foreshadowed such problematic weather, warning that “with global warming uncontrolled, the likelihood of compound extremes, such as the simultaneous occurrence of droughts and heat waves, is likely to increase.” Droughts can make flash floods more likely because the soil becomes less absorbent.
Heat waves in India normally occur before the monsoon season, from March to June. But this year, temperatures have remained extremely high for much longer, reflecting the steady warming trend of recent years. While temperatures of 91 degrees or more were recorded on an average of 70 days per year between 1961 and 1990, between 1991 and 2022 there were an average of 89 days that reached that goal.
Much of China also continued to bake Friday as the heat wave shattered records across the country.
The extreme western region of Xinjiang has been particularly hard hit. Temperatures on Sunday in a remote desert village reached 126 degrees, reportedly the previous record for the highest temperature in China. According to official media, parts of Xinjiang would continue to see temperatures in excess of 100 degrees. Authorities also said they were alert to possible forest fires in northern Xinjiang.
Late July is historically the hottest time of the year in southern China, and officials there warned that the high humidity would cause temperatures to feel nearly 20 degrees hotter than actual readings.
China’s largest freshwater lake, Poyang Lake, entered the dry season on Thursday, the earliest start to the season since records began in the 1950s, according to authorities in Jiangxi province. They cited the persistent heat and lack of rain as the reason for the alarmingly low water levels.
In northern China, several cities, including Beijing, have broken records for most days in a year above 95 degrees, though the downpours that began Thursday night were expected to finally bring some relief.
But the storms brought their own concerns as officials warned of possible flash flooding around the capital. Two years ago, on July 20, 2021, the city of Zhengzhou, in central China, recorded the most recorded rainfall in one hour in the country ever, according to state media, as downpours killed at least 300 people.
In the United States, forecasters said the current heat wave is expected to continue through the weekend in the Deep South and Southeast and into next week in the Southwest. Nearly 80 million Americans are expected to experience temperatures above 105 in the coming days, according to the National Weather Service.
More than a quarter of the U.S. population experienced dangerous heat Thursday, according to a DailyExpertNews analysis of daily weather and population data.
Severe storms, particularly in the southeastern United States, have increased the toll on energy supplies. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power when strong thunderstorms knocked out power lines; 150,000 homes in Georgia were without electricity and 52,000 homes and businesses in western Tennessee experienced power outages Thursday.
In Europe, scorching temperatures have taken a particular toll on the elderly, with southern European countries joining others as far north as Belgium in drafting heat plans, many of them aimed at protecting older populations.
Extreme heat can be dangerous for anyone’s body, but older people and outdoor workers are especially at risk. According to a recent study, summer heat waves in Europe may have killed 61,000 people last year.
This year’s heat and humidity were particularly devastating in northern Mexico, where more than 100 people died of heat-related causes after a “heat dome” parked over the region, according to reports from the federal health ministry.
Heat domes are weather phenomena that occur naturally from time to time. Some meteorologists and climate scientists believe that a warming Arctic causes the jet stream to slow down, meaning such weather systems stay in one place longer.
Mr Nielsen-Gammon of the Southern Regional Climate Center said it was too early to know if that had happened in the case of the heat dome over Mexico and the southern United States.
Reporting contributed by Suhasini Raj in New Delhi and Viviane Wang in Beijing. Li You contributed to research from Shanghai.
