More than 50m Americans under alert as heatwave persists

 

More than 50m Americans under alert as heatwave persists

 

Phoenix experiences 31st day where temperatures have reached at least 110F (43.3C), while wildfires burn in California and Nevada

 

Erum Salam

Mon 31 Jul 2023 17.37 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/31/us-extereme-heat-alert-wildfires

 

Over 50 million Americans remain under a heat advisory in one of the hottest summers ever recorded, and a heatwave continues to affect vast parts of the country.

 

Nasa recently confirmed June was the hottest June ever.

 

The hot and dry weather in the south-west of the US has set off a wave of wildfires. California and Nevada are currently battling a major fire that is uncontrolled. Another out-of-control fire that originated in Washington state has spread into Canada, forcing residents in the town of Osoyoos, British Columbia, to evacuate.

 

Sunday marked the 31st consecutive day where temperatures reached at least 110F (43.3C) in Phoenix, Arizona. The city’s previous record was 18 days in June 1974.

 

Doctors in the region reported a rise in first-, second-, and third-degree contact-burn cases, some fatal, amid extreme heat conditions.

 

The reports of severe burn incidents came from hospitals in Arizona and Nevada, where deaths from heat-related conditions have surged.

 

In Texas, San Antonio hit an all-time high of 117F in June.

 

Bodies of water around the world are experiencing a phenomenon known as “marine heatwave”, when waters warm to unprecedented levels. A sharp rise in temperatures has been seen in the Caribbean Basin, the Atlantic, and the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the already fragile ecosystems of marine life, particularly coral reefs. The conditions cause coral to bleach, and in many cases, die.

 

Andrew Baker, director of the Coral Reef Futures Lab at the University of Miami told the Washington Post: “This is definitely the worst bleaching event Florida has ever seen.”

 

Ocean surface temperatures in places such as Florida have surpassed 90F, the threshold for water to be safe to swim in. The hot-tub like temperatures left its residents with limited options for cooling down.

 

Amid record-breaking heat levels, Joe Biden last week announced new measures to protect Americans against the “existential threat of climate change” and extreme heat. Some of these measures include improving access to clean drinking water, planting more trees, opening more cooling centers, and cracking down on labor heat-safety violations.

 

Biden said: “We want the American people to know help is here, and we’re gonna make it available to anyone who needs it.”

 

Experts say the measures are a step in the right direction, but not nearly enough. In his address, Biden stopped short of declaring a climate emergency or directly addressing the need to phase out planet-heating fossil fuels.

 

On Monday, four Democratic senators – Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley and Elizabeth Warren – sent a letter to the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, urging him to bring lawsuits against the fossil-fuel industry for its longstanding and carefully coordinated campaign to mislead consumers and discredit climate science in pursuit of huge profits.

 

In the letter, the lawmakers wrote: “The fossil-fuel industry has had scientific evidence about the dangers of climate change and the role that burning fossil fuels play in increasing global temperatures for more than 50 years.”

 

They added: “Despite these companies’ knowledge about climate change and the role their industry was playing in driving carbon emissions, they chose to participate in a decades-long, carefully coordinated campaign of misinformation to obfuscate climate science and convince the public that fossil fuels are not the primary driver of climate change.”