Climate Watch: Unprecedented High Temperatures, Early Heat Domes

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Category: Earth, Air, Space Science

Published on Tuesday, 16 July 2024 09:41

Written by Dr. Jane M. Orient, M.D.,

Summer is here and the living is easy and hot. Cities, across the nation, not accustomed to the extreme temps, are baking in the heat and like Tucson are experiencing "excessive heat" warnings for several days straight.

The Southwest is not the only area of the nation experiencing successive triple-digit temperatures. From the West Coast to the East Coast, the U.S. is baking as an unprecedented early heat dome has settled over many areas of the country. The nation's capital has issued excessive temperature warnings as the unprecedented heat wave bakes much of the eastern seaboard.

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But as the graph shows, it is not unprecedented. U.S. maximum temperatures in June 1933 were higher. Of course, one can argue that it was just "weather" then, owing to Dust Bowl conditions, but it is "climate change" now. (Note that connecting two points, as in the graph, does not make a trend. The direction of a trend depends on the starting and stopping points. If we started in 1776, near the end of the Little Ice Age, it is definitely warmer now.) 

The mean of maximum U.S. temperatures as guesstimated by NOAA has been fluctuating between about 78- and 86 degrees F. Many factors contribute to these differences of about 8 degrees. The gradual small rise in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has nothing to do with them.

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Heat waves are a serious problem for people who live in cities. The urban heat island (UHI) effect can raise temperatures 10 or more degrees above what they would be in the countryside. Increasing urbanization likely accounts for 40 percent of reported warming. The ways to mitigate it do not involve reducing "carbon footprints." Increasing green spaces, rooftop gardens, reflective roofing materials, and permeable pavements are helpful measures.

Looking at global rather than U.S. temperatures in the graph below, we see that there is a big spike in 2024. This is explained by the 2022 eruption of the underwater volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai, which injected an unprecedented amount of water vapor, from 146 trillion grams (40 billion gallons) of water, into the stratosphere. This is equal to about 10 percent of the water vapor normally present there. Water vapor is by far the most important "greenhouse gas."

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Additional information:

·         Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES): ceres-science.com

·         Climate—the Movie (the Real Truth)

·         NOAA's June 2024 data shows no "record high" U.S maximum temperature.

·         "Look at the trend." Which trend?

Jane M. Orient, M.D. obtained her undergraduate degrees in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Arizona in Tucson, and her M.D. from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1974. She completed an internal medicine residency at Parkland Memorial Hospital and University of Arizona Affiliated Hospitals and then became an Instructor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and a staff physician at the Tucson Veterans Administration Hospital. She has been in solo private practice since 1981 and has served as Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) since 1989.

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She is currently president of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. She is the author of YOUR Doctor Is Not In: Healthy Skepticism about National Healthcare, and the second through fifth editions of Sapira's Art and Science of Bedside Diagnosis published by Wolters Kluwer. She authored books for school children, Professor Klugimkopf's Old-Fashioned English Grammar and Professor Klugimkopf's Spelling Method, published by Robinson Books, and coauthored two novels published as Kindle books, Neomorts and Moonshine. 

More than 100 of her papers have been published in the scientific and popular literature on a variety of subjects including risk assessment, natural and technological hazards and non-hazards, and medical economics and ethics. She is the editor of AAPS News, the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness Newsletter, and Civil Defense Perspectives, and is the managing editor of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.

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If you would like to discuss these issues, contact me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Jane M. Orient, M.D., Executive Director, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.