ENVIRONMENT: Most lethal forest fires, record heat

HEAT WAVES are setting new records all over the world. Europe had its most lethal forest fires in more than a century.

In California, dozens of homes were burned and at least 37,000 . were evicted. Heavy downpours with the risk of floods have hit the east of the United States this week.

All this is typical of summer, but it has worsened due to the climate change caused by man, affirm scientists.

“There is an abundance of extraordinary events,” said climatologist Jennifer Francis, from Rutgers University, in New Jersey.

Japan recorded on Monday 41.1 degrees Celsius (106 ° F), the highest temperature in its history. Parts of Massachusetts, Maine, Wyoming, Colorado, Oregon, New Mexico and Texas also posted temperature records.

And the strong heat has plagued Europe, where Norway, Sweden, and Finland have experienced temperatures that they had never seen, above 32 ° C (90 ° F).

So far this month, at least 118 temperature records were exceeded or equaled on the planet, according to the National Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States (NOAA).

The explanations may sound familiar. “We now have very strong evidence that global warming has tipped the balance, increasing

the probabilities of extreme heat and rain, “said climatologist Noah Diffenbaugh, of the University of Stanford. “We have concluded that global warming has increased the chances of breaking heat records in more than 80% of the planet, and has raised the odds of record hydrological events in the middle of the orb “.

Climate change is increasing the temperatures in the world due to the accumulation of gases from the greenhouse effect from the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, and from other human activities. And experts say that jet streams – which determine the climate in the Northern Hemisphere- are showing strange behavior.

“A jet stream  has remained in the same place for weeks in a very unusual way”, said Jeff Masters, director of Weather Underground. Because of this, there are three zones that are maintained Hot: Europe, Japan, and the western United States. That same pattern in the jet streams caused the heat wave of 2003 in Europe, as well as the heat wave and the fires of 2010 in Russia, the drought of Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and the wildfires of Canada in 2016, said climatologist Michael Mann, of the State University of Pennsylvania, who mentioned previous studies by him and other authors.

Mann noted in an email that these extremes are “becoming more frequent due to the climate change caused by man and in particular the amplification of warming in the Arctic. “