Water levels in South America's Amazon River have reached their lowest levels since measurements began, and temperatures in Mali's capital “remained above 110 degrees Fahrenheit” for nearly a week in April, the Washington Post reported. “Even at night, the temperature often exceeded 90 degrees, and I felt little relief…”
They added that “the overburdened power grid experienced a glitch and shut down,” and that “dehydration and heatstroke were widespread… At the city's main hospital, doctors faced one emergency in just four days. “We recorded a record number of deaths for the month. Local cemeteries were overcrowded.”
The historic heatwave that hit Mali and other parts of West Africa this month would be “virtually impossible” in the world without anthropogenic climate change, scientists say, but the sudden rise in global temperatures , is just the latest phenomenon in the alarming rise in temperatures. . Decades of uncontrolled fossil fuel burning and the El Niño climate pattern that emerged last June have pushed the planet this year past a feared warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. did. Since January 1, approximately 19,000 weather stations have recorded record high temperatures. Each of the past 10 months has been the warmest of its kind.
The size and intensity of this hot zone is unusual, researchers say, even considering the unprecedented amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Scientists are still struggling to explain how Earth was able to beat its previous temperature record by 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) last fall. What happens in the coming months could indicate whether Earth's climate has undergone fundamental changes, said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. This is a quantum leap in warming that is confusing climate models and causing more dangerous extreme weather events than ever before. .
But even if the world were to return to a more predictable warming trajectory, Schmidt said it would only be temporary relief from the situation humanity will soon have to face. “Global warming is progressing rapidly.”
Will this summer's La Niña weather make it cooler? More research into the atmosphere is progressing, and “Schmidt says it's too early to know how much the world should worry,” according to the article. But he does raise this possibility. “What happens when the statistical connections we base our predictions on are no longer valid?”
“There is a feeling smoldering in the back of my mind that the past is no longer a guide to the future.”