Climate change spawns wild weather whiplash
Extreme heat, drought, floods becoming the ‘new normal’
The first day the temperature soared above 100˚F in Southern California was not an exceptional event for September.
Ten consecutive days of triple-digit heat, however, is remarkable.
September is our hottest month. So the forecast for a few days of intense heat, then a return to ‘normal’, is expected. This time, though, it was wrong.
After 10 consecutive days, records were shattered, the power grid was trembling and like millions of others I was exhausted – lucky enough to be able to stay inside with air conditioning running constantly.
On the tenth day, it rained – a vanishingly rare event for us in September. The new forecast warned of possible flooding and high winds from an approaching tropical storm.
Wrong, again! Tropical storm Kay dissipated just this side of the border with Mexico.
San Diego had “record” rain of 0.61 inches on Sept 9. The previous “record” for that day was 0.09 inches, according to the National Weather Service.
Here, a gentle rain overnight cleaned the sky and breathed new life into the garden!
What a relief.
For more than week, the unrelenting heatwave that just ended set new records throughout the Western United States in its duration and intensity, affecting over 50 million people.
Sacramento, the California state capital, reached an all-time record high of 116˚F on Sept. 6.
In my corner of the country, it forced us to stay indoors, running air conditioning around the clock (if we are lucky enough to have it) and hoping for a break. Worries about electricity blackouts soared with the temperature as the power grid was stressed.
From the outset, something unusual about the heat was obvious to most of us. Even though high temperatures often reach 100°F they don't usually stay there.
Nighttime lows can be 30°F cooler than daytime highs. Not this time. For the duration of this extreme event, the low temperature didn’t drop below 80°F. It makes sleeping soundly problematic, at best.
After three or four days of erroneous weather forecasts, I gave up even looking. They predicted an end to the heat wave repeatedly, and they were wrong each time.
Five days into it, the state power grid manager, the California Independent System Operator issued its first “Flex Alert.”
During the early part of the day I received an email requesting that we minimize our electricity consumption between 4 and 9 p.m. to relieve strain on the grid. Raise the thermostat, don’t run major appliances, postpone doing dishes!
Apparently many recipients missed the warning.
A few minutes before 6 o'clock, a piercing alarm went off on my phone as I received a statewide emergency text alert. “Reduce power use now to avoid rolling blackouts,” it said.
Electricity demand that day had hit an all-time record high of 52 gigawatts, breaking the previous record set in 2006.
Fortunately the text alert did its job. According to CalISO, demand immediately plunged by 2 gigawatts. The emergency was lifted at 9 p.m. There were no blackouts.
The e-mail Flex Alert was, however, repeated again the following day – but no more emergency text alerts! Flex Alerts were also issued for two more days.
Californians responded. With some localized exceptions, widespread rolling blackouts were avoided for the entire week.
For many of us, this raised long dormant memories of 2002 when greedy power companies like Enron gamed the newly deregulated electricity system, resulting in higher profits for them and repeated rolling blackouts for the rest of us.
A few Enron executives went to jail for their shenanigans; Gov. Gray Davis lost his job in a recall election.
As if he did not want to suffer a similar fate to Davis, during the heatwave Gov. Gavin Newsom had been calling in his chips around the state trying to get people with diesel backup generators to put them online and to get natural gas plants with spare capacity to increase their output.
Newsom also signed into law a measure aimed at protecting Californians from extreme heat.
In future, the state will rank heatwaves like hurricanes so that it can warn residents if, for example, there is a Category 4 heatwave in the forecast, this is what it'll be like and what one should do to prepare.
“This week’s unprecedented heatwave is a painful reminder of the costs and impacts of climate change – and it won’t be the last,” said Newsom.
“California is taking aggressive action to combat the climate crisis and build resilience in our most vulnerable communities, including a comprehensive strategy to protect Californians from extreme heat. With lives and livelihoods on the line, we cannot afford to delay.”
He’s right. At least the state is trying novel ways best to address the issue.
It was late afternoon Friday, Sept. 9 when the first few light raindrops began to fall on my garden.
As I sat outside for the first time in 10 days, the sky darkened, the humidity began to drop and the rainwater began soaking into the ground.
About an hour later, the temperature was down to a “comfortable” 95˚F and we all began to breathe easier. Overnight rain brought additional relief.
But the weather whiplash we all endured is something we will have to get used to.
Climate scientists have been warning for decades that the extremes are going to be get worse. Droughts will be longer and drier, heatwaves more intense and longer, flooding more frequent and more severe.
Calling it the new “normal” is not entirely accurate.
Even if greenhouse gas emissions were totally halted today, the planet’s temperature will keep getting hotter for the foreseeable future.
Climate change is raising the baseline temperature of the planet. A couple of degrees warmer on average may not seem like a lot, but if one envisions the Bell Curve of temperature ranges even a minor increase in the middle also increases the extremes. This has been going on for over a century.
We cannot reverse it overnight. But we have to start now. There’s not a moment to lose, and the weather whiplash we experienced recently is yet another urgent reminder.
Extreme weather is becoming a fact of life everywhere. It's time for politicians to wake up and take REAL action to end greenhouse gas emissions fast!
Wow, thanks for a most interesting article Warren, outlining all the details of the heatwave
in your part of the country. Now, we hope that the fires can be doused! Great that the State avoided power outages and things are being done to cope with all this in the future.