Global Warming Causes Extreme Weather This Summer

Photo+Courtesy+of+NCEI

Photo Courtesy of NCEI

Sarah Richman

As a result of global warming, extreme weather events occurred throughout the United States this summer. With record high temperatures, states saw raging wildfires, multiple tropical storms, and severe flooding across a wide span of states caused by Hurricane Ida.

As temperatures are rising worldwide, temperatures in the United States are rising as well. According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, the average temperature of the continental United States in June-August 2021 was 74.0 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 2.6 degrees Fahrenheit above the average. These temperatures make this summer tied for the warmest summer on record with the extreme heat experienced in the Dust Bowl in 1936.

Photo Courtesy of CNN

Climate change is the source of this increase in temperature, and because a warmer atmosphere holds and therefore releases more water, climate change is also the source of the increase in other extreme weather occurrences. Because of climate change, heat waves, heavy precipitation, floods, droughts, and storms are greatly more abundant than before. Even just a few degrees increase in temperature, as experienced this summer, can make a drastic difference. For example, precipitation and drought events are twice as likely to occur, and extreme heat events five times as likely to occur.

As observed this summer, high temperatures impacted the severity of events such as droughts and hurricanes. Severe droughts caused wildfires along the west coast. Currently, wildfires in the United States span across California, Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. There are sixty eight active wildfires, fifty eight of which are uncontained, that have burned across more than 5.1 million acres of land. These fires have killed many firefighters.

High temperatures also heightened the effects of Hurricane Ida on the northeast portion of the United States. For example, the hurricane caused a massive storm in the northeast states that resulted in severe flooding. In New York, streets flooded, and a record-breaking 3.15 inches of rain fell in just one hour. Although subways and trains were evacuated, at least 43 people died in the storm in New York alone, and several others from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut were killed in the event.

Global warming and the events that it causes also have negative impacts on the health of the people amid them. For instance, the west coast wildfires and severe droughts worsen the air quality. As Mona Sarfaty, the executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, states, “America’s doctors are already seeing the health toll of climate change.” 

Events this summer demonstrated that climate change has already become a massive issue within the United States.