CLIMATE CHALLENGESClimate Change Has Sent Temperatures Soaring in Texas
Hotter days and nights. More record highs. Climate change has shifted the entire range of Texas heat upwards. Heat is one of the deadliest consequences of climate change. It’s already the most dangerous type of weather, typically killing more people annually than hurricanes, tornadoes or flooding.
Record-breaking heat is becoming the new normal in Texas, an analysis of temperature data by the Texas Tribune shows, as climate change steadily warms the planet and shifts the range of typical temperatures higher.
A dangerous heat wave this month has brought three weeks of 100-degree temperatures from the state’s border with Mexico all the way to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The heat wave has shattered records and prompted excessive heat warnings across most of the state.
Such heat waves — and the record-breaking temperatures they bring — are becoming more common and severe due to climate change, scientists told the Tribune.
Over the last 10 years, there were more than 1,600 days when a heat record was matched or broken at one of 22 weather stations across Texas. That’s more than 1,000 more record-breaking days than the 561-day average at those stations in the decades prior to 2013, the Tribune’s analysis found.
Weather data shows that record-breaking cold is occurring less frequently.
Those trends are being driven by climate change, experts said, as the planet warms due to decades of human activities that have pumped huge quantities of heat-trapping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere peaked at 424 parts per million in May, continuing to reach levels that have not been recorded for millions of years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Heat is one of the deadliest consequences of climate change. It’s already the most dangerous type of weather, typically killing more people annually than hurricanes, tornadoes or flooding. A Tribune analysis found that more than 275 people in Texas died from heat-related illness last year, a two-decade high that experts say is almost certainly an undercount.
Heat waves “are so large, they impact a huge swath of area, and they persist for so long,” said Hosmay Lopez, an oceanographer at the NOAA who has studied heat waves. “Heat has so [many] compounding negative effects on human health.”
Extreme heat is presenting new challenges for communities across the state that rely on infrastructure built for a climate of the past.
James Doss-Gollin, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University who has researched adaptation to extreme weather, said the state’s electric grid and dams are two examples of infrastructure that are greatly impacted by increasing temperatures. Just a few degrees of difference, he said, can jeopardize the availability of electricity and the structural integrity of dams.
