Why Death Valley and the Pacific Northwest are so hot right now

The West Coast is burning up. Death Valley’s average temperature in July –107.4 degrees Fahrenheit — was the hottest on record, and cities like Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake City, Palm Springs and Phoenix have reached record scorching temps over the past few weeks, too. Meanwhile, wildfires are raging north of the border in British Columbia and Cascade Mountains.

Twenty Mule Team Canyon in Death Valley, California. 

Climate change might be tipping records. “A few of our temperature records would not have been broken with this heat wave,” Philip Mote, a climate scientist at Oregon State University, said. “If you took this specific meteorological condition and then dialed back the greenhouse gases to what they were 50 years ago, it would be a little bit cooler. Portland instead of being 103 yesterday might’ve only been 101.” Weather experts shared the sentiment that climate change’s contribution to an event like this “might be a degree or two.”

Without global warming, there would still be a heat wave, just probably not a record-setting one.

Read the PBS Newshour story by Roni  Dengler - “Why Death Valley and the Pacific Northwest are so hot right now.”