In northern China, road surfaces have soared to 158F (70C). In California’s Central Valley, temperatures are reaching into the triple digits Fahrenheit. Across much of Spain, the mercury has risen so high that it’s prompting warnings for tourists.
Weeks before the official start of the Northern Hemisphere’s summer, signs are emerging that the coming months will be blistering in North America, Europe and Asia. There’s even a chance that the season could shatter global high-temperature records, said Daniel Swain, a climatologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The scorching conditions threaten to tax power grids, wilt crops and send energy prices soaring across three continents. Hot, dry weather is also elevating the risk of wildfires, with blazes already erupting in Alberta, the epicenter of Canada’s oil industry. The human and economic consequences are dire: Extreme heat is expected to inflict about $200 billion in annual losses in the US alone by 2030, a number that will more than double by 2050, according to one estimate.
All three northern continents face sweltering temperatures fueled by climate change — particularly the western and central US and Canada, as well as western and northern Europe, Swain said. Because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, these regions will also see areas of intense rain and flooding, he said.
“I’d expect to see further instances of extreme to record-shattering downpours and flood events in regions prone to heavy precipitation during the warm season,” Swain said.
In the Atlantic, the heat is raising ocean temperatures, boosting the odds of an unusually active hurricane season. The absence of El Niño, a warming of the equatorial Pacific that can cause storm-wrecking wind conditions across the Atlantic, also means more hurricanes and tropical storms may develop and grow in the Atlantic and Caribbean, including oil- and gas-producing areas along the US Gulf Coast.
Due to kinks in the summer jet stream, there is a rising chance of derechos – wide arcs of severe thunderstorms that can travel hundreds of miles and cause billions of dollars in damage — across the Midwest and northern Plains, said Paul Pastelok, lead US long-range forecaster at AccuWeather Inc. This turmoil across the continent may also leave the Gulf Coast, particularly Texas, vulnerable to more hurricane strikes.
The sizzling weather will increase energy demand. About 89 million people across three grids spanning parts of the central US are at elevated risk of power supply shortfalls this summer, according to the North American Electric Reliability Corp. Power prices across the grid stretching from Chicago to the Mid-Atlantic are likely to rise with sustained heat because of low coal stockpiles, Bank of America analysts led by Francisco Blanch wrote in a note to clients. New England power is also vulnerable to spikes, the analysts said.
