It's been a rough four days here in the Willamette Valley, as well as in much of the rest of Oregon. Record high temperatures have been set on multiple days in many locations, sometimes breaking previous records by not just a little, but a lot.
Today it was 104 degrees in Salem, where I live, according to my car's thermometer. Tomorrow is expected to be just as hot, with temperatures in the high 80s and low 90s for the following six days.
This isn't normal. The average high for today in Salem is 82, so we were 22 degrees above average. Global warming plays a significant role in the heat waves that have been hitting Oregon much more frequently recently, according to the state climatologist, Larry O'Neill.
I saw O'Neill make these remarks on the KGW 11 pm news a few days ago. They were extremely disturbing then, and even more so now, after I've been dealing with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees for the past three days.
I've boldfaced the scariest part of what O'Neill said.
PORTLAND, Ore. —
If you think the weather in Oregon over the next week is going to be too hot, Larry O'Neill has some bad news for you.
"Right now, this is probably among the coolest climates we'll be in at the rate we're going," he said.
O'Neill is the state climatologist for Oregon, and he said climate change is amplifying heat waves in the state and across the globe.
"Heat waves are a natural part of our climate system, but when they do occur, now they're occurring in a warmer baseline," he said. "Any heat wave that we get, you can kind of think about it as being about 3 degrees Fahrenheit more intense than it would have been had we not been changing the climate."
Climate change has made extreme heat hotter, longer and more frequent.
There's no hard and fast definition of a heat wave, but regardless of what's used as a measuring stick, warm temperatures have been increasing in Oregon.
"The number of days over 90 degrees or the number of days over 100 degrees, whichever way you parse it, these days are happening much more frequently, especially over the last 10 years," O'Neill said.
According to records from the National Weather Service, between 1938 and 2014, Portland saw an average of 12 days per year with temperatures over 90 degrees.
Between 2014 and 2023, that number nearly doubled to an average of 23 days per year.
Over the past 86 years, Portland has recorded 105 days with temperatures over 100 degrees, but 16 of those days have come in just the last four years.
Portland’s current stretch of extreme heat is expected to be notable not just for its temperatures, but for its duration, with forecasts calling for five days of heat at or above 100 degrees.
Wow. As hot as it has been the past few days, O'Neill says that soon we'll look back at this time in Oregon's climate history as one of the coolest in recent memory, because global warming is going to increase for quite a while no matter what we human do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Obviously we'll be better off if those emissions are markedly lowered. That's why it's so important that President Biden's climate change initiatives be continued and, hopefully, increased.
But Donald Trump has vowed to reverse the progress our country has made in combatting global warming. Trump wants to undo those policies and make things worse by increasing the consumption of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas.
That would be amazingly wrong-headed. It would be a disaster economically, since renewable energy is an increasingly important part of our economy. And it would be a disaster environmentally, since we're already not doing enough to reduce carbon emissions, so moving backward under a Trump administration would be horrendous for both our planet and humanity.
There are plenty of reasons not to vote for Trump this November. His commitment to increase global warming, rather than combat it, is definitely a major reason.
Oregon will go for Biden as it's still very Democratic controlled, but climate change isn't all we should worry about. Sorry if you're uncomfortable but I've lived there many many years at its climate has changed a lot in those years.
Posted by: Rain Trueax | July 09, 2024 at 10:25 AM
Dennis Prager is right; truth is not a left-wing value!
Posted by: DJ | July 09, 2024 at 12:20 PM
More leftist bullshit, fossil fuels are civilizations greatest producer of food and modern neccessities of life.
Posted by: DJ | July 11, 2024 at 08:34 AM