DETROIT – One week ago, southeast Michigan sweltered as temperatures rose into the mid to upper 90s, with the humidity making it feel like closer to 110 degrees.
This week, it was Europe’s turn (for the second time this summer) as record after record fell. In fact, some cities not only set record highs, but also highest temperature records for the entire month of July and, in some cases, their all-time highest recorded temperature.
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I was talking with my friend, Local 4’s Nightcam Tim Pamplin, who, as you probably know, is from England, and he told me that this kind of heat is so unusual there that air conditioning is almost unheard of in people’s homes, so weather this hot has an even more dramatic effect there than it does here.
Interestingly, this week I got a look at the statistics for the first half of this year and, through the end of June, our planet’s average temperature is in the top-five of hottest years since reliable records began in 1880.
Notice on the chart that each of the past five years (2015-2018 and 2019 so far) have been top-five hottest years. One or even two recent years in the top-five might make you take notice, but wouldn’t necessarily be a sign of anything. But when each of the past five years reaches that lofty territory, then you know something’s going on.
And that something is global warming (or, if you prefer, climate change…I use the phrases interchangeably without any bias or implied additional meaning).
What’s happening is actually very simple: Humans have changed the composition of our planet’s atmosphere. Since heat is energy coming in minus energy going out, the chemical change of our atmosphere – which has reduced the amount of energy going out – is causing warming.
Most of that warming right now is being taken up by the oceans and, if we reversed that land-to-ocean ratio, then the land where you and I live would be heating up much more dramatically.
One of my biggest challenges is trying to get people to understand that what is happening in their backyard is not necessarily what is happening to the rest of the world. Take a look at this map, which shows where the world’s temperatures were above or below average the first six months of this year. If you lived in the north-central United States, you actually had a cooler than average first half of the year. But virtually the entire rest of the world was warmer than average. This is why I actually prefer the term “global warming” – because it emphasizes that the planet is warming, not just one region.
Here’s another way to look at our planet’s evolving climate…take a look at this chart, which was put together by climate scientist Brian Brettscheider. Each colored line represents global temperatures by decade from the 1950s to the current decade.
That smooths out a rogue year or two with significant temperature extremes due to something like El Nino, or a massive volcanic eruption. The planet’s rapid warming really took off in the 1980s, and you can see on this chart that, starting with the 1980s, each subsequent decade has been warmer than the previous decade.
This is a very significant trend that has a very clear message: Earth’s climate as a whole is warming very dramatically. So, the next time you hear somebody claim that the planet is not warming, these verified scientific facts prove them wrong.
So what does all of this have to do with our heat wave last weekend and Europe’s heat wave this week? Did global warming cause them? I have to answer this question very carefully so that you understand what is and is not true.
First of all, global warming did not necessarily cause the two heat waves to happen. However, the warming climate is making heat waves more common, and more severe.
There’s a great analogy to illustrate this: Consider baseball players who took steroids. If you’re a baseball fan, you may remember the time when Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa were hitting an unprecedented number of home runs. Steroids helped their bodies recover quicker from the day-to-day baseball grind and made them stronger. Did they hit home runs before they started taking steroids? Absolutely. They were great hitters, and hit a lot of home runs. But the steroids helped them to hit more of them, and the ones they hit were traveling farther.
Humans have increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In essence, what we’ve done is put the atmosphere on steroids. Now you understand what is happening.