John Yang:
A massive heat dome has been spreading across much of the United States, with temperatures reaching historic highs, but it’s not an isolated spike. In recent weeks, the country has grappled with a series of extreme weather events.
Ali Rogin more for our periodic series Tipping Point.
Ali Rogin:
John, this heat is not just notable for nearly unprecedented early spring temperatures, but also for the amount of ground it’s covering. Temperatures have been 20 to 40 degrees above normal in the Great Plains, and it’s been moving east.
Some cities are already seeing record-breaking streaks, and the heat is expected to last into early April. That’s because a high-pressure system is acting like a lid, trapping hot air underneath and allowing temperatures to rise day by day. The Southwest registered triple digits, with temperatures reaching 101 degrees in New Mexico. Kansas also set a march record with 102 degrees twice in four days.
For more on what we can expect in the coming days, I’m joined by Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist at Climate Central.
Bernadette, thank you so much for being here.
How unusual is it for us to see this type of heat in March, and has this ever happened before?
Bernadette Woods Placky, Climate Central:
This is wildly unusual. And, no, it has not happened to this level before.
I do think people are used to seeing temperatures spike 100 degrees in Phoenix and Las Vegas, but that’s usually May, June, July. It’s not in March.
Ali Rogin:
And how far has this heat spread in the country so far, and what can we expect in the coming days?
Bernadette Woods Placky:
Sure, so there’s a lot of ways to put together these numbers, and, any way you look at them, they are breaking records like we have never seen before.
One is, we broke an all-time temperature record for March for the country. We also have had multiple states break their all-time March temperature record. We have seen hundreds of records a day happen over this past week.
And when you break down the balance of record highs to record lows, we took it back all the way to the beginning of the year, because, remember, there were some cold stretches. But since the beginning of the year, 85 percent of our records have been warm or hot records, and only 15 percent have been cold records.
So there’s a lot of coverage in that early season cold. It’s nothing compared to what we’re experiencing right now.
Ali Rogin:
So you mentioned we’re seeing record heat, record cold, but why is it that we are seeing more record hot weather than cold?
Bernadette Woods Placky:
Well, that’s because of climate change.
Now, one is the weather pattern. It’s extraordinary for this time of year. It looks more like a weather pattern we’d see in July. But that weather pattern alone, combined with the additional fossil fuel pollution we put into our atmosphere, is why we’re breaking records to this level.
And one way you can look at that, right, is, we understand the greenhouse effect. This is science that goes back to the 1800s that really isn’t challenged. And we can measure those greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and we know we’re putting more of those into our atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels like oil, coal, and gas.
So when you thicken that blanket around our atmosphere, it traps more heat. The most obvious and direct way that we experience that extra warming on our planet is through extra hot days.
Ali Rogin:
And, now, we have been experiencing these heat domes. For the last 10 years, they have been on the rise. What makes them different, though, from just other types of early spring warm weather?
Bernadette Woods Placky:
Well, we have had heat domes before. We have had them this time of year before.
But what happens underneath those, when you add those extra greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, it allows our temperatures to go to levels we have never experienced. So that’s the big difference right now, is that every time we’re using the word unprecedented or record, and it feels like it’s getting a little old to some people, but it’s happening that frequently right now that we’re pushing record highs to this level.
Ali Rogin:
This hot weather is also having implications for things like snowpack and water resources out West. How is this going to affect communities not just in the present, but in the months to come?
Bernadette Woods Placky:
This is a really important part of this conversation, because the West as a whole has been really low on its amount of snow this year.
And you got to remember that’s water. That’s water for the warmer months. That’s how we water our plants and our crops. That’s also our water resources. So, on April 1, this is a really big day out West, where we take these measurements across many different areas in the mountains and get an assessment of where that snowpack is for the year as we head into these warmer months.
We are so low. We’re at record lows. And it really varies from state to state. But it’s not only that it’s record low. This March heat has forced melting earlier than usual. So we’re not going to have that water in the same ways at the times that we need it. And then that really ups our risk for wildfire.
Ali Rogin:
The weather just seems to get worse and worse every year, but it’s not just extreme heat. It’s also things like flooding in Hawaii, rare snow in Alabama, shifting temperatures in the Northeast.
What else can we expect in terms of extreme weather for the rest of this year?
Bernadette Woods Placky:
Well, it’s interesting to look at this as a full pattern.
One thing we do know is that we are shifting into what’s called an El Nino year. And there have been discussions of this in the past, and people have followed along. But what happens during El Nino years is, we get this extra boost of heat in the water that translates into our atmosphere, and it usually pushes our temperatures overall for the planet higher.
So that is one thing. And then that shifts our weather patterns a little bit more. But what we also know is that, when you add more heat to this atmosphere, it’s like a boiling pot of water, right? And so things get more turbulent. And when we have more rain events, when they do actually trigger, there’s more precipitation for them to come down.
And when we get these heat events, it pushes to higher levels. And that’s what we’re experiencing right now. And that will continue.
Ali Rogin:
In the 40 seconds we have left, I want to ask you about these floods in Hawaii that seem to be really unusual. What can you attribute that to?
Bernadette Woods Placky:
Well, one way we have looked at that is the water temperatures. These are islands. And the storms are coming off of the water. And the water around the islands right now is higher than usual.
And there is a climate change fingerprint in that also. And we can look at that through what we call attribution science, and we can tease out that role of climate change in those water temperatures. So it’s adding more fuel and more moisture for these storms. It’s adding an extra little boost to the already wet pattern that was setting up.
Ali Rogin:
Bernadette Woods Placky with Climate Central, thank you so much for joining us.
Bernadette Woods Placky:
Thanks for having me.
