Permanent Heat

Hotter summer temperatures could be a permanent fixture for half of the world by 2070.

Using data from more than 50 climate model experiments, a study by Stanford University researchers Noah Diffenbaugh and Martin Scherer predict the Northern Hemisphere will face extreme heat due to greenhouse gases.

"According to our projections, large areas of the globe are likely to warm up so quickly that, by the middle of this century, even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers of the past 50 years," said Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of environmental Earth science at Stanford University.

They also predict tropical areas, like Africa, Asia, and South America will experience "the permanent emergence of unprecedented summer heat" within twenty years.

Europe, China, and North America will see their summer temperatures shift within 60 years.

The increased summer heat represents a very real threat to human health and crop production. The study points to the 2003 European heat waves that killed 40,000 people and experimental models that show summer temperatures having a significant impact on soy and wheat produced in the Midwestern United States.

"The fact that we're already seeing these changes in historical weather observations, and that they match climate model simulations so closely, increases our confidence that our projections of permanent escalations in seasonal temperatures within the next few decades are well founded," Diffenbaugh said.

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health and the World Bank. The results of this study will be published in the June issue of Climatic Change.

Source: Mother Nature Network