United States | News & Politics

Since when does CNN link the weather with “human-caused climate change”?

An unusually strong heat dome will scorch much of the western United States this weekend, bringing the hottest temperatures so far this year to tens of millions from California to Canada.

Dozens of record highs are expected to fall in at least 12 states in the West through the weekend with around 40 million people under heat alerts.

High temperatures will climb between 10 to nearly 20 degrees hotter than they should be — even for the peak of summer — from Southern California to the northern Rockies and Plains from Friday through Tuesday. Death Valley, California, is forecast to see the hottest temperature of this heat wave: a blistering 126 degrees.

This is the latest in a spate of record-breaking heat waves that have affected the US and Europe simultaneously this summer. Human-caused climate change is making heat waves like this one more likely to occur, as well as more intense and longer-lasting, studies show. Particularly strong and slow-moving heat domes are also possibly becoming more common as the world warms, though this is an area of active research.

The heat dome responsible for this heat wave may also set records for its intensity in parts of Southern California and Arizona. Heat domes act like a lid on a pot, trapping and enhancing hot air beneath them. This one is expected to reach even higher in the atmosphere than typical, and that means it can trap even more air below it, raising the ceiling on just how extreme surface temperatures can get.