Extreme Temperature Diary- Sunday June 9th, 2024/Main Topic: Could the ‘Katrina’ of Heatwaves Strike the U.S.?

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The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉

Main Topic: Could the ‘Katrina’ of Heatwaves Strike the U.S.?

Dear Diary. I came across an interesting article yesterday as introduced by climate warrior, Paul Beckwith. Essentially it asks, what if a severe heatwave occurred over a big U.S. metropolitan area, and simultaneously the power went out? This happened in 2022 when a severe CAT5 heatwave I named Smaug hit Europe, but power mostly did not go out there during that event. Tolkien would be pleased with that nomenclature, but unlike a mythological dragon, Smaug was seriously deadly. Hundreds died in Britain and thousands elsewhere because many residents did not have air conditioning since traditional climate in Europe was not hot enough during summer to require it.

Extreme Temperature Diary- Monday July 10th, 2023/Main Topic: Over 61,000 European Deaths Blamed on CAT5 Heatwave Smaug From 2022 – Guy On Climate

Slowly the electric grid is improving here in the United States with green energy starting to make nice inroads supporting it, so power here is increasingly less likely to go out over a large area. Too, about 99% of resists have air conditioning. Yet, there is a possibility that a heatwave like one experience in Europe will develop in the U.S. that is so powerful that that a blackout would occur affecting millions. What might happen would be the death of hundreds here.

There is a good chance that the heatwave that I’ve dubbed Exxon will make a comeback in the Southwest and overspread a good chunk of the country from this week into the next. I’ll write more on this on Monday and Tuesday once models become clearer on any Exxon comeback.

In any case, it’s interesting that the authors of the following article described a killer heatwave as one that is like “Katrina.” Here we have yet another reason for naming severe heatwaves.

Experts Fear Horrifying Heat Waves That Could Kill Tens of Thousands of People at Once (futurism.com)

JUN 4, 5:30 PM EDT

byFRANK LANDYMORE

/ EARTH & ENERGY

EXPERTS FEAR HORRIFYING HEAT WAVES THAT COULD KILL TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE AT ONCE

WE COULD HAVE “THE HURRICANE KATRINA OF EXTREME HEAT” ON OUR HANDS.

Beat by Heat

American cities are ill-suited for the heat. The asphalt and concrete that dominate our infrastructure mercilessly intensify it, driving outdoor temperatures in urban areas by up to an additional 20 degrees Fahrenheit on a hot afternoon. We can often ignore the fact that we’ve trapped ourselves in metropolis-scaled frying pans, however, thanks to air conditioning in our cars and homes.

But the uptick in extreme weather attributed to climate change, plain old heat included, has continually put many cities’ energy grids under threat. So what happens when all those AC units suddenly lose power?

If a blackout hits during a blistering heat wave: an absolute catastrophe, according to experts in an op-ed piece for The New York Times written by Jeff Goodell, author of “The Heat Will Kill You First.” In one extreme scenario befalling an American city, over ten thousand people could die as the result of a single heat wave, sending hundreds of thousands more to the hospital.

Goodell said that Mikhail Chester, director of the Metis Center for Infrastructure and Sustainable Engineering at Arizona State University, once likened such a scenario as “the Hurricane Katrina of extreme heat” — underscoring the vulnerability of American infrastructure to soaring temperatures.

Widespread Wipeout

Those staggering figures come from a study published last year in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, which explored what would happen if a major, two-day blackout took place during a heat wave in Phoenix, Detroit, and Atlanta.

Some 99 percent of buildings in Phoenix have AC, according to the study, which makes its power grid most likely to fail. Atlanta is just behind at 94 percent, and Detroit, the coolest city, ranked at 53 percent.

In Phoenix — which last year went an entire month with temperatures of 110 degrees Fahrenheit or higher — the death toll could be monumental. The study found that a whopping 800,000 people — half the Arizona capital’s population — would need emergency medical care, and more than 13,000 would die.

These figures were considerably lower for Atlanta and Detroit, which are cooler cities, but no less worrying: six people would die in Atlanta, the study estimated, and 221 in Detroit.

According to the researchers, the number of major blackouts in the US more than doubled between 2015-16 and 2020-21 — though not all were due to the climate.

“It doesn’t really matter if the blackout is the result of a cyberattack or a hurricane,” study lead author Brian Stone, director of the Urban Climate Lab at Georgia Tech, told the NYT. “For the purposes of our research, the effect is the same.”

Either way, hot temperatures do cause power grids to fail, and so we’ll have some serious infrastructural overhauls to do — and perhaps changes in our power consumption habits — to ensure that cities can withstand the heat.

More on climate change: Mexico Getting So Hot That Monkeys Are Falling Dead From Trees

Related:

Here are more “ETs” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:

Here is More Climate News from Sunday:

(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)

More from the Weather Department:

Today’s News on Sustainable Energy, Traditional Polluting Energy from Fossil Fuel, and the Green Revolution:

More on the Environment and Nature:

More on Other Science and the Beauty of Earth and this Universe:

If you like these posts and my work on record temperature ratios, please contribute via my PayPal widget on this site. Thanks in advance for any support. 

Guy Walton… “The Climate Guy”

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