Right now, my region of the country is under a heat dome. This isn't some alien technology designed to make humans submit to extraterrestrial supremacy, though it certainly sounds like that. Rather, this is a function of our current atmospheric situation, in which unusually (unseasonably) high temperatures and no chance for rain are locked in over us for a while, causing the mercury to soar and heat-related injuries and mortality to skyrocket. And yet, people are still going hiking.
This current heat dome event has been given a tentative end date, so there is some hope that it will soon degenerate and give us more reasonable summertime weather soon, but this June, which is ending in a few days, is now the hottest on record in our area. In the meantime, as if some sadistic deity is cranking up the planet’s thermostat, each day this week has gotten considerably warmer, to the point that, by ten in the evenings, well after sunset, it is still in the mid 80s (26-32°C). At this time of year, the sun rises (in our area) a few minutes after six in the morning and descends over the western horizon at twenty minutes to nine, meaning that, from dawn until dusk, the sun is up for about 14.5 hours, heating every surface to the egg-frying point. Old brick houses like ours absorb the heat and radiate it for several hours after full dark. Thank the gods for central air.
The cause of this heat dome is a huge high pressure area in the upper atmosphere that squishes the air beneath it, compressing everything like a big waffle iron in the sky. This particular heat dome event has stalled, failing to clear off in a respectful manner, and in the meantime, is ruining everything. During this weather event, too, the barometer remains high, so no rain and very few clouds impede the burning and sizzling of the sun. As the man said, “Yeah, but it's a dry heat.” This you can see by gazing up at skies that are, if nothing else, nearly Autumn blue and clear. By the time this dome disintegrates and moves east, the number of heat-related illnesses and deaths will be as unpleasantly high as the temperature.
Events like this heat dome are caused by increasing amounts of carbon and methane in the atmosphere which disrupt the normal weather patterns. It’s not a matter of opinion, mine or anyone else’s. It is a scientific fact that has been tracked by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for decades. Those who are of the opinion that global heat indexes aren’t rising will cite the colder winters and worsening winter weather as evidence that the temperature on the surface isn’t increasing. After all, if things are getting progressively warmer, what is with these very cold winter events? It’s a question worth addressing.
A little more than six months ago (as the clock flies) we were preparing for Yule and I was baking a lot of cookies to bring to neighbors and friends. Temperatures were barely reaching above freezing during the brief daylight hours, and nighttime thermometers were struggling to capture the single digit chill. It was so cold that the water on top of our pool cover froze solid and a clay planter on our courtyard dining table shattered with a crack as I strode by, scaring me senseless.
Our ears, noses and fingers grew numb between the house and the car or the car and the shops. Any time spent outside had to be carefully planned to make sure that enough layers were worn and all extremities were covered. Pipes burst around the block from us three times over that week. We stayed in as much as possible, kept the dogs on a short potty break schedule and tried like heck to keep our own pipes from bursting. It's hard to believe that this is the same house, sweltering and sticky, that, half a year ago, was shuddering with cold.
That event was called a polar vortex. During it, arctic air was forced down into our region by slow-moving high pressure in the troposphere allowing the chilled weather common in those latitudes above the arctic circle to waft down across our temperate region, increasing cold-related illnesses and freezing deaths. It was bone cold and that cold was a result of the shenanigans of a weather pattern called La Niña.
You’ve no doubt heard of this sibling to El Niño, who first got a lot of attention during the late 1990s when bizarre weather patterns first took national and international notice. We’re having a La Niña year and that does not bode well for those of us who live in the eastern US. This is mainly because “The Girl” causes a shift in the polar jet stream, a river of air currents that flows west to east from Alaska down across the United States in a large undulating curl, to slide further northward. La Niña is caused by warm waters off the western coasts of the Americas near the equator getting blown toward Asia by the trade winds there. As the warm sea water moves westward, cooler water from deeper in the Pacific Ocean rises to the surface pushing the Jet Stream further north. This causes a dryer, hotter summer in our region, but it also means a high pressure area can more easily stall right over our house because there is nothing to push it out to sea.
The current (and hopefully soon-to-be dissipating) heat dome is further exacerbated by the fact that, as high pressure systems move over the area, they now tend to stall, causing giant anvils of heat to settle over our heads. When this happened in 2021 in the Pacific Northwest, it caused summer temperatures to spike to thirty degrees above the average of their three hottest months. That heat dome killed many people and caused mischief to the power grid and at hospitals before it broke up. Today, you’ll notice that there is some cloud cover, which will help to deflect the sunlight and reflect it back into space, which may help to cool things a bit.
A heat dome over us means that, as the hot air heats the Atlantic Ocean, that body of water becomes far more fertile for hurricanes. Also, the hotter the seas, the stronger the trade winds, which blow that hot water toward Asia, which starts the whole process over again. The seas are hotter because the atmosphere is hotter. The whole atmospheric situation has become a kind of perpetual motion machine.
When a polar vortex occurs in winter, people go outside and say, “How can the atmosphere be getting warmer if it is this cold? Global warming is a hoax!” This not only betrays a total lack of even basic seventh grade science, but it also shows that people will cling to any false data in order to prove their fantasies are right. But, a polar vortex is also caused by too much warm air, in this case, up in the troposphere. As it rises toward the North Pole, it unsettles the vast spinning mass of frozen air there. The warm air causes the polar air system to wobble, and the resulting unsettled behavior causes freezing air to swell down into the middle latitudes. Imagine squeezing a water balloon; as your fingers (the hot air) close, the balloon expands and distends. This is what initiates a polar vortex in our region. In both cases, these events are caused by unusual heating of the atmosphere.
It’s not all bad news, though. Our planet has a built-in system that will rebalance the ecological shifts caused by too much carbon and methane in the air. Okay, it’s true that either of them is a cataclysm on a mass scale that will likely devastate human populations and disrupt agricultural production and power grids. But at least things won’t be so damned hot, anymore.
Eventually, enough particles will enter into the atmosphere, either from pollution or from extreme volcanic activity (or both) that little or no sunlight will make it to the surface of the planet (this could also be caused by a nuclear winter, but what are the chances of that?). The heat trapped within will soon dissipate, and the surface temperature will drop. Seawater will begin to freeze and the ice sheets and glaciers will grow and spread, moving south and causing the temperate parts of the planet to become considerably colder. The bigger the ice sheets, the more reflective the surface of the planet becomes, shooting solar energy back into space. Eventually, the seasons will morph into a longer and longer winter, until glaciers and frost will move far enough south to freeze big rivers and extend the ice sheets well out into maritime waters. When that happens, the next ice age will have started.
You may scoff, because we’ve already had one ice age and we’re done, right? Actually, we’re in what is called an interglacial period, when the warm up between ice ages forces the glaciers back again. The earth has had several ice ages in its very long (to us) life, but the most recent likely began around 20,000 years ago and ended just 11,000 years ago. They occur with enough regularity on their own to be of concern to future generations (if we survive the consequences of our planet’s current surface turmoil) but of even more concern if, by pumping thousands of cubic feet per person of particulates into the atmosphere, we could actually be speeding the coming ice age along its way right now.
Sooner or later, the earth will become basically uninhabitable. Right now, with the scalding air weighing on our sunburned necks, it feels like we’re going to be scorched to death, but the fact is, humanity is having an unhappy impact on our only safe and true home. Sooner or later, we’ll have to face the consequences of our greed and addiction to fossil fuels. However, if history is anything to go by, we’ll keep on covering our eyes and refusing to admit that our pants and our lives are on fire.
As part of the plan in place should the former president be re-elected is an initiative to dismantle organizations that track weather, like NOAA, because they ‘promote global warming lies’. If this happens, we will no longer have the ability to track the very obvious disturbances in the weather, nor will we be able to make a scientific case to reduce carbon output. All of this is funded, of course, by fossil fuel and petrochemical companies that pump campaign money to candidates that allow them to keep their monopoly on coal, oil and gas. Most, if not all of the arguments against global warming or claiming that it is a lie come from these same sources. We have the opportunity to make up our own minds in the matter, and the evidence seems to prove that, if nothing else, things are changing and not for the better. This may be the hottest summer on record for us, but it may actually be the coolest summer from now on, if the trends continue. And it looks like they will.
Now I have to water our garden. Again.
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