SOURCE: Mashable
DATE: July 24, 2018
SNIP: Historic heat records fell in California earlier this month. Yet, two weeks later, another mass of warm air has returned to the southern part of the state, heating the region for days.
The second heat wave of July will last from Monday through Thursday, said the National Weather Service. While this heat won’t be quite as severe as the last, it’ll still bring “record and near-record high temperatures” to different areas of California.
As average temperatures around the globe continue their accelerated rise, extreme heat events like these are becoming more and more frequent.
“The big picture is clear,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in an interview.
“As our temperatures globally have been increasing, we’ve been seeing a lot more record-breaking heat waves,” said Swain.
“With greenhouse-gas induced warming temperatures, heatwaves are expected to become more common,” Robert Weisenmiller, Chair of the California Energy Commission, said via email.
“The number and duration of heat waves will also increase and, again, high temperature records will be broken more frequently,” said Weisenmiller.
“There are many variables with weather, but scientist around the world agree, in general, extreme weather is becoming more common, along with rising seas, prolonged droughts, and more frequent wildfires.”