Mexico recorded the highest temperature in its history last week in a heat wave that has claimed at least 125 lives this year.
According to a new study, the climate change caused by man made the heat waves this month in Mexico, Central America, and the southwestern United States were still warmer and 35 times more likely.
The suffocating daytime temperatures that triggered cases of insolation Some areas of the United States were 1.4 degrees Celsius warmer due to warming caused by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, World Weather Attribution calculated Thursday., and group of scientists that carries out studies of climate attribution fast and not peer-reviewed.
“This is an oven; you can’t be here,” says Margarita Salazar Pérez, 82, from Veracruz (Mexico), in her house without air conditioning. Last week, the sonoran desert reached 51.9 ºC, on the day hotter of Mexican history, according to Shel Winkley, a Climate Central meteorologist and co-author of the study.
The heat wave in Mexico has claimed 125 lives this year
Mexico recorded the hottest day in its history last week, when temperatures in the sonoran desert They reached 51.7C. The current heat wave has claimed the lives of at least 125 people this year.
And it was even worse at night, which is what made this heat wave was so deadly, says Imperial College London climatologist Friederike Otto, who coordinates the attribution study team. Climate change has made night temperatures were 1.6ºC warmer and that the unusual heat night was 200 times more likely, he says.
There has not been the fresh night air to which people are accustomed, says Salazar Pérez. Doctors say that some night temperatures Cooler temperatures are essential to survive a heat wave. Until now Have they diedat least 125 peopleaccording to the World Time Attribution team.
Climate change is increasing the intensity and risks of extreme temperatures
“This is clearly related to climate change, with the intensity level what we are seeing, with these risks,” says Karina Izquierdo, co-author of the study and urban advisor in Mexico City from the Climate Center of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.
The alarming thing about this heat wave, which technically continues to cook the North American continentis that it is no longer so out of the ordinary, says Otto. Previous studies of the group have analyzed such extreme heat that seemed impossible to them without climate change, but this heat wave not so much. “From a meteorological outlook in that sense it was not strange, but the impacts were really very bad,” says Otto.
“The changes we have seen in the last 20 years, which seems like yesterday, are very strong,” says Otto. According to his study, the probability of this heat wave occurring is four times greater now than in 2000, when the temperature was almost 0.5 ºC lower. “It seems like something far away and a different world.”
While other groups of international scientists – and the global goal of reducing carbon emissions adopted by the countries in the 2015 Paris climate agreement– refer to heating from the preindustrial era in the mid-1800s, Otto says comparing what’s happening now to the year 2000 is more surprising.
“We are facing a changing baseline: what was before extreme but rare is becoming more and more common,” says Carly Kenkel, a professor of marine studies at the University of Southern California, who was not part of the attribution team’s study. She calls the analysis “the logical conclusion based on the data.” .
A month of record temperatures
The study looked at a wide swath of the continent, including southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize and Honduras, and the five consecutive hottest days and five consecutive hottest nights. In most of the area, those five days were June 3-7 and those five nights were June 5-9, but in a few places the heat peak It started on May 26, says Otto.
For example, San Angelo (Texas) reached the record of 43.8ºC on June 4. Between June 2 and 6, the night temperature never went below 26.7C at the Corpus Christi airport, a record every night, with two days in which the thermometer never went down of 29.4C, according to the National Meteorological Service.
Between June 1 and 15, more than 1,200 were equaled or beaten records for maximum daytime temperatures in the United States and almost 1,800 records for maximum nighttime temperatures were reached, according to the National Center for Environmental Information.
The attribution team used measurements of current temperature and past, contrasting what is happening with what happened in past heat waves. They then used the scientifically accepted technique to compare simulations of a fictional world without human-caused climate change with current reality to determine the extent to which global warming influenced the 2024 heat wave.
The persistence of extreme weather events worsens existing inequalities
The immediate meteorological cause was a high pressure system parked over central Mexico that blocked the storms and cooling cloudsthen moved toward the southwestern US and is now bringing the heat to the eastern USsays Winkley. The tormenta tropical Alberto formed on Wednesday and is heading towards northern Mexico and southern Texas with some rainwhich can cause flooding.
Mexico and other places carry months dealing with drought, water scarcity and brutal heat. Monkeys have been falling from trees in Mexico because of the heat.
This heat wave “exacerbates existing inequalities” between rich and poor in the Americas, says Izquierdo, and Kenkel agrees. The heat of the night is the time when inequalities become really evidentbecause the ability to cool off with air-conditioning central depends on one’s economic comfort, says Kenkel.
ADVERTISINGAnd that means that during this heat wave Salazar Pérez has been quite uncomfortable.
