As Northeast Asia Bakes, Climate Scientists Predict More Extreme Heat Waves on the Horizon

Northeast Asia is on fire.  Yesterday temperatures in Shanghai hit an all-time high of 105.4ºF (40.8ºC), the hottest day in the coastal megacity since Chinese officials began keeping records some 140 years ago — during the Qing dynasty.  On Aug. 12 the heat reached 105.8ºF (41ºC) in the southern Japanese city of Shimanto, the hottest temperature ever recorded in the country.  Hundreds of people throughout South Korea have been hospitalized because of heatstroke, even as the government was forced to cut off air-conditioning in public buildings because of fears of a power shortage.

As heat waves go, it’s similar to the brutally hot weather that singed Europe 10 years ago and contributed to the deaths of over 30,000 people.  It’s also a glimpse of a blazingly hot future.  As a new study published in Environmental Research Letters shows, the sort of scorching heat waves currently baking Northeast Asia are likely to become more frequent and more severe around the world in the decades to come — and that’s going to happen no matter what we do about carbon emissions in the near future.

As Northeast Asia Bakes, Climate Scientists Predict More Extreme Heat Waves on the Horizon