SEMO's John Kraemer discusses prolonged heat

With a National Weather Service excessive heat warning in effect through 10 p.m. Friday, Aug. 25, for an 11-county area of Southeast Missouri, including Cape Girardeau, Perry and Scott counties, the Southeast Missourian reached out to an expert from Southeast Missouri State University to drill down on the phenomenon.

John C. Kraemer is SEMO's program director for environmental sciences and a professor in SEMO's Biology Department.

Multiple sources say today's heat follows closely the hottest July on Earth since temperature records have been kept. Do you agree?

I would definitely say July 2023 had the highest mean surface temperatures with July 6 being the highest. The folks who watch this on a global scale is a group called the World Meteorological Organization, which just put out a new report talking about what's going to happen between this year and 2027.

What WMO is predicting is that during that period is one of the hottest years ever recorded will occur during the time frame.

More information may be found at https://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/july-2023-confirmed-hottest-month-record.

The term "climate change" is used a lot and often without explanation. What in your view is the cause of this broiling heat wave?

I'd say it's a long answer. We've had lots of changes over geologic time. We've had heating periods and ice ages. We know there's a fluctuation in Earth's climate, which is how we all got to be here.

If we look at the short term, say the last 40 years, we know that Co2, carbon dioxide, has gone up, coming from burning fossil fuels. Have human actions had a role in what we're seeing now? Absolutely. You're adding the human reality on top of natural sources. Air temperature is super important which leads to rain events and precipitation. We know we've had warming on the North and South Poles, reducing ice caps, which increases the amount of energy that gets stored. Radiation that gets stored in the Earth is not reflected back into space. Freshwater is now going into the ocean, which is not good. Freshwater changes salinity, changes water temperature and is going to change the cycling of the ocean and affects flow paths. And one of the impacts of these flow path changes is we're finding sharks in places we haven't found them before. Why are they doing that? Because marine life is following the conditions that best support them. They're adapting. One of the adaptations scientists are working on now at the poles is putting up reflecting material to try to replace the ice packs, hoping it will bounce the radiation back out into space. We could talk for hours about this.

How warm it is when we walk outside seems like the result of a complicated cascade event. Agree?

We know as the ocean temperature rises, warm air blows across the water onto land. I always teach my students, and here is the big lesson, everything is connected to everything else. It's very difficult to tell people what's going to happen and everybody wants to know what the weather's going to be like tomorrow. It's hard. If you don't believe me, ask the people whose job it is to forecast the weather. Is it going to be sunny, is it going to rain? You just don't know with any certainty. When the ocean temperature goes up, how is that going to affect Cape Girardeau or Memphis or New Orleans? They're all going to be affected somewhat differently, but just how is hard to estimate. We all watch the news and we see the information on our phones. Predicting daily weather is simply hard to do.

Beating the heat

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers these tips to survive extreme heat.

• Air conditioning is the No. 1 way to protect yourself against heat-related illness and death.
• An oscillating fan should not be relied on as a main cooling device during extreme heat.
• Drink more water than usual.
• Don't wait until you're thirsty to hydrate.
• Check on friends and neighbors and have someone check on you.
• Limit use of the stove and oven. Both will make you and your house hotter.

For more information, visit www.cdc.gov/nceh/features/extremeheat/index.html.