Some areas in Texas will experience temperatures hotter than the Sahara desert this Thursday. Intense heat domes are driving temperatures sharply up to triple digits.
In the central and southern regions of Texas, the combined measurement of temperature and humidity is expected to reach “feel-like” temperatures between 105 and 108 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday. These temperatures are hotter than parts of the Sahara Desert, where several cities in Morocco are forecasted to hit the high ’90s F.
Cities like Houston, San Antonio, and Austin in Texas have a chance of breaking daily temperature records on Thursday, with minimal relief anticipated from the Heat Dome in the coming days.
The oppressive heat and humidity are projected to persist through the weekend and into next week, as noted by the National Weather Service.
While Texans are accustomed to high heat and humidity, the current conditions are more typical of summer rather than May.
Heat advisories are in effect for Atascosa, Bexar, Frio, Medina, Uvalde, and Wilson counties until 8 PM local time. The National Weather Service warns that high temperatures combined with humidity “can lead to heat-related illnesses.”
As reported earlier this week on X, the weather authorities stated that people “will not adapt to this level of heat within a year, increasing the risk of heat-related health issues.”
This early heatwave has already set multiple records, with new daily highs reported in Austin and Del Rio, San Antonio, on Wednesday. Austin Bergstrom International Airport hit a record high of 100 F, surpassing the previous May 14 record of 96 F set in 2003. San Antonio recorded 102 F, breaking its previous record of 97 F from 2022.
Although it’s challenging to link specific extreme weather events to climate change, research indicates that global warming is increasing the frequency, duration, and intensity of heatwaves globally. Every decade since 1850 has seen its hottest years within the last ten years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with the last two years setting new global temperature records.
The extreme heat is expected to continue affecting parts of Texas and the southern and central regions through Friday and the weekend. The National Weather Service predicts that heat index values in Texas will range from 100 F to 110 F over Saturday and Sunday.
“Whatever way you look at it, this weekend is set to be extremely hot in southern Texas,” according to the long-term forecast.
Climate change could increase the frequency and severity of droughts
Zhang Yu/VCG via Getty Images
Severe, perennial droughts have become hotter, drier, and more extensive since the 1980s. These prolonged droughts, some of which are so extreme that they are classified as ‘megadroughts’, can have particularly devastating effects on agriculture and ecosystems.
Rising temperatures associated with climate change are increasing the risk of drought by making the air warmer, retaining more moisture, and increasing evaporation from the land. Combined with changes in precipitation patterns that lead to reduced rainfall, this could exacerbate droughts and lengthen their duration. This is evidenced by the recent megadrought in parts of North and South America, the worst in 1,000 years.
dark cargar Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forestry, Snow and Landscape Research identified more than 13,000 droughts lasting at least two years from 1980 to 2018 to uncover long-term trends. They found that the most severe multi-year droughts since the 1980s have become drier and hotter.
Droughts are also affecting wider areas of the planet, with the area affected by the 500 most severe droughts each year expanding by around 50,000 square kilometers each year. “That’s an area larger than Switzerland,” Karger says.
Satellite images showing green areas in drought-affected areas also show some ecosystems turning brown, indicating that dry conditions are having an effect. The most dramatic changes were seen in temperate grasslands, which are more sensitive to changes in water availability, while tropical and boreal forests showed smaller responses.
The researchers have not conducted a formal analysis to define how much anthropogenic climate change is contributing to this trend, but they say the pattern is consistent with the rise in temperatures researchers expect. states. benjamin cook from Columbia University in New York was not involved in the study.
The study highlights that long-term droughts can have consequences as severe as climate disasters such as devastating wildfires or powerful hurricanes, Cook said. “It’s the cumulative effects of drought, both for humans and ecosystems, that really matter.”
Using a catalog of 26,041 white dwarfs observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, astronomers confirmed a long-predicted effect in these ancient, ultra-dense stars.
Concept art of two white dwarfs with the same mass but different temperatures. The hot star (left) is slightly swollen, while the cool star (right) is more compact. Image credit: Roberto Molar Candanosa / Johns Hopkins University.
At the end of their stellar evolution, stars that are not massive enough to become neutron stars or black holes eject their outer layers and leave their cores as compact remnants known as white dwarfs.
All stars with initial masses in the range of 0.07 to 8 solar masses (about 97% of all stars) end their lives as white dwarfs.
Dr Nicole Crumpler said: 'White dwarfs are a great way for us to work together to test theories underlying commonplace physics in the hope that we might discover something exotic that points to new fundamental physics. It is one of the best characterized stars ever made.” , an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University.
“If you want to look for dark matter, quantum gravity, and other unusual things, you need to have a good understanding of normal physics.”
“Otherwise, what seems novel may just be a new manifestation of an effect we already know.”
The new study was based on measurements of how these extreme conditions affect the light waves emitted by white dwarf stars.
As light moves away from such a huge object, it loses energy in the process of escaping gravity and gradually turns red.
This redshift effect stretches light waves like a rubber band so they can be measured with telescopes.
This is caused by the distortion of space-time caused by extreme gravity, as predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity.
By averaging measurements of a white dwarf's motion with respect to Earth and grouping them according to gravity and size, astronomers can isolate gravitational redshifts to determine how high temperatures affect the volume of their gaseous outer layers. We measured the impact it had.
The team's 2020 study of 3,000 white dwarfs confirmed that electron degeneracy pressure causes stars to shrink as their mass increases. Electron degeneracy pressure is a quantum mechanical process that keeps dense nuclei stable for billions of years without the need for the nuclear fusion that normally underpins our sun and other planets. Types of stars.
“Until now, we haven't had enough data to confidently confirm the subtle but important effects of increasing temperature on the mass-size relationship,” Crumpler said.
“The next frontier may be detecting very subtle differences in the chemical composition of the cores of white dwarf stars of different masses,” said Dr. Nadia Zakamska, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University.
“The maximum mass a star can have to form a white dwarf, as opposed to a neutron star or a black hole, is not completely understood.”
“These increasingly precise measurements will help test and refine theories about this and other poorly understood processes in the evolution of massive stars.”
“This observation could also help in attempts to discover signatures of dark matter, such as axions and other hypothetical particles,” Crumpler said.
“By providing a more detailed picture of the structure of white dwarfs, these data could be used to reveal the signals of certain models of dark matter that cause interference patterns in our galaxy.”
“If two white dwarfs are in the same dark matter interference patch, the dark matter will change the structure of these stars in the same way.”
Although dark matter has gravity, it does not emit light or energy that can be seen with telescopes.
Scientists have learned that the sun makes up most of the matter in the universe because its gravity affects stars, galaxies, and other space objects in the same way that it affects the orbits of planets. I am.
“We've been banging our heads against the wall trying to figure out what dark matter is, and I'd say we've been caught flat-footed,” Crumpler said.
“We know a lot about what dark matter is not, and there are limits to what dark matter can and cannot do, but we still don't know what it is.”
“That's why it's so important to understand simple objects like white dwarfs, because they give us hope of discovering what dark matter is.”
Nicole R. Crumpler others. 2024. Detection of temperature dependence of mass radius and gravitational redshift of white dwarfs. APJ 977, 237;doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad8ddc
Parts of the US experienced heatwaves during the day that could cause heatstroke, with temperatures rising by 2.5C (1.4C) due to global warming caused by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. World Weather Attribution, The calculations were made Thursday by a group of scientists conducting a rapid, non-peer-reviewed study of climate factors.
“It’s like an oven out here, there’s no way I could be here,” said Magarita Salazar Pérez, 82, who lives in Veracruz, Mexico, in her home without air conditioning. Temperatures in the Sonoran Desert reached 125 degrees Fahrenheit (51.9 Celsius) last week, making it the hottest day in Mexico’s history, said Shel Winkley, a meteorologist at Climate Central and co-author of the study.
And it was even worse at night, which is what made the heatwave so deadly, said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London who is leading the team investigating its causes. Climate change has caused nighttime temperatures to rise by 2.9 degrees Celsius (1.6 degrees Fahrenheit), making extreme nighttime heat 200 times more likely, Otto said.
Salazar-Perez said there isn’t the cool nighttime air that people are used to, and doctors say lower nighttime temperatures are key to surviving the heatwave.
A man holds his head in the heat at the Cogra nursing home in Veracruz, Mexico, on June 16, 2024.Felix Marquez/AP
At least 125 people have been killed so far, according to the Global Weather Attribution Team.
“This is clearly related to climate change, the level of intensity that we’re seeing, these risks,” said Karina Izquierdo, urban adviser at the Mexico City-based Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center and co-author of the study.
Otto said what’s worrying about this heat wave, which is still heating up North America, is that it’s no longer unusual. Previous research from the group has shown that extremely extreme heat waves Not possible without climate changebut not this heat wave.
“So in that sense it’s not unusual from a meteorological standpoint, but the impacts were really bad,” Otto told The Associated Press in an interview.
“The changes over the last 20 years, which feel like yesterday, have been so dramatic,” Otto said. Her research shows that heat waves are four times more likely now than they were in 2000, when temperatures were nearly 1 degree Celsius (half a degree Celsius) cooler. “It seems so long ago, like another world.”
While other international groups of scientists, as well as global carbon emission reduction targets adopted by countries in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, have noted that warming has been increasing since the pre-industrial era in the mid-1800s, Otto said comparing what is happening now to the year 2000 is even more shocking.
“We’re seeing the baseline shift, and what was once extreme but rare is becoming more and more common,” said Carly Kenkel, dean of marine studies at the University of Southern California, who was not involved in the team’s investigation. She called the analysis a “logical conclusion based on the data.”
Jorge Moreno drinks flavored water while working at a construction site in Veracruz, Mexico on June 17, 2024. Felix Marquez/AP
The study looked at the five hottest days and nights across a wide swath of the continent, including Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize and Honduras. In most areas, the five days were from June 3 to 7, and the five nights were from June 5 to 9, but in some places, the peak heat began as early as May 26, Otto said.
For example, San Angelo, Texas, recorded a record 111 degrees (43.8 degrees Celsius) on June 4. Between June 2 and June 6, Corpus Christi Airport's nighttime temperatures never dropped below 80 degrees (26.7 degrees Celsius), setting a new nighttime temperature record, with two days where the temperature never dropped below 85 degrees (29.4 degrees Celsius), according to the National Weather Service.
Between June 1st and June 15th, more than 1,200 Highest daytime temperature record The United States saw a flurry of records being broken and tied, with nearly 1,800 overnight high temperature records set, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information.
The team used both current and historical temperature measurements to contrast what’s happening now with past heatwave conditions, then used a scientifically-accepted method of comparing a hypothetical simulation of a world without human-made climate change with current reality to calculate how much global warming contributed to the 2024 heatwave.
Winkley said the immediate meteorological cause is high pressure that was parked over central Mexico, blocking storms and clouds that brought cold air, then moved into the southwestern U.S. and is now bringing hot air to the eastern U.S. Tropical Storm Alberto The storm formed on Wednesday and is heading toward northern Mexico and southern Texas, where it is likely to bring rain and cause flooding.
The heatwave is “exacerbating existing inequalities.” Rich and poor Izquierdo said the inequality is stark in the Americas, and Kenkel agreed: Nighttime heat is accentuated because the ability to stay cool with central air conditioning depends on how affordable you are, Kenkel said.
So, Salazar-Perez was feeling very uncomfortable during this heatwave.
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