Even in Washington

By Lindsay Abrams
22 July 2015

(Salon) – Wildfire season isn’t what it used to be.

In Washington state, a combination of ongoing drought and rapid development made 2014 particularly nightmarish, and this year’s unusually hot conditions are fueling another season of dangerous blazes — more than 300 so far, including one, 3,000-plus acre wildfire that destroyed homes and businesses in central Washington.

That’s no longer out of the ordinary. Washington firefighters are bracing themselves for an onslaught of oxymoronic-sounding “urban wildfires,” NPR reports – basically, brush fires that bump right into cities, threatening entire communities. Officials there say it’s a “growing threat,” one more commonly associated with cities like San Diego — although increasingly, they point out, the weather in Washington state seems to resemble that of southern California.

John Sinclair, chief of Kittitas Valley Fire and Rescue, told NPR he’s not qualified to say what’s causing the drought and rising temperatures, but the trend, he maintains, is clear: ”We’re seeing significant amounts of fires in places where we’ve never seen fires before.”

Added Peter Goldmark, the commissioner of public lands with the state’s Department of Natural Resources, ”We need more resources to deal with this emerging threat of really hot conditions, which make our many communities at risk.” [more]

Washington state’s terrifying new climate threat: “Urban wildfires”

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,wildfire,forest fire,North America,drought

Burning

By Keven Drews
22 July 2015

WEST KELOWNA, B.C. (The Canadian Press) – Relentless forest fires burning across British Columbia may be the new normal, Premier Christy Clark warned as she stood not far from a raging fire that threatened homes in her own riding.

Clark spoke near the Westside Road fire outside West Kelowna on Wednesday, where flames have forced emergency officials to issue evacuation orders to the residents of 70 homes.

It's one of 10 evacuation alerts or orders across the province, where more than 250 blazes are burning, 43 of which broke out on Tuesday following a series of lightning storms.

The premier said she is concerned that climate change has altered the terrain, drying out the land and making it more vulnerable to fire, and as a result what B.C. is seeing isn't unusual and will happen more often.

As of Wednesday, the province has spent more than $140 million battling the 1,300 wildfires that have broken out this season, and Clark said the province could spend another $300 to $400 million this year if the pace continues.

She doesn't think the fires will put the province into a deficit, because the government ran a surplus of $1.7 billion last year and is expected to run a surplus again this coming fiscal year, Clark said.

"I am mostly concerned … that the forest fire season won't give us a break and that we're going to see more homes threatened, more people's livelihood threatened, more forest resources lost."

Clark said B.C. must continue to fight climate change, be better prepared for wildfires and have the necessary resources to fight them.

The fire in Clark's riding is particularly unsettling because hundreds of homes were lost in 2003 when a wildfire swept through Kelowna -- just across Okanagan Lake from the current blaze.

"In Kelowna, we are becoming more and more familiar with this, and so it's kind of like every summer they kind of get the band back together," said Clark.

"Everybody comes to the co-ordination centre," she said. "They all know how they interrelate because sadly we are doing this every year now, but boy we do it better than anybody else in the world." [more]

B.C. Premier Clark fears raging wildfires new norm, blames climate change

Technorati Tags: Canada,North America,global warming,climate change,forest fire,wildfire,habitat loss

Redwood drought

By John R. Platt
9 July 2015

(Takepart.com) – California’s towering redwood trees are dying of thirst.

“They require enormous amounts of water,” said Anthony Ambrose, a tree biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has been studying redwoods and giant sequoias for nearly two decades. “For the big, old trees, they can use more than 2,000 liters of water per day during the summer.”

Water, however, is in increasingly short supply in the Golden State. All around drought-stricken California, coast redwoods appear to be suffering. They’re shedding leaves, turning brown, and dropping undersized cones. Some of the state’s younger trees, situated in parks and residential areas hundreds of miles away from their native forests, are even dying.

What does that mean for the state’s ancient redwood forests, where the trees are often centuries old and climb hundreds of feet into the air?

Ambrose and his colleagues Wendy Baxter and Todd Dawson want to answer that question. Last year they started studying the trees at two sites near Santa Cruz, where the redwoods, Douglas firs, and California bay laurel trees all show signs of water stress.

Now they want to take that research to a whole new level to help them understand the long-term effects the drought could have on the redwood forests. Long-term water stress, they fear, could leave the trees susceptible to diseases or insects, make them grow more slowly, reduce their ability to establish seedlings, or even kill them. The trio has launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise the $24,000 necessary for the research.

“Redwoods are an iconic key species,” Ambrose said. “They’re the tallest, oldest, and largest trees in the world. Everybody around the world knows about them. People love them, even if they’ve never visited them. They’re beautiful forests and beautiful trees.” He called redwoods, Douglas firs, and bay laurel trees the “charismatic mega-flora” of the forests. Beyond that, any impact on the redwoods and other large trees could cascade through the rest of the ecosystem and even into the economy. [more]

Will the Drought Topple California’s Towering Redwoods?

Technorati Tags: California,North America,deforestation,global warming,climate change,drought,heat wave,ecosystem disruption,habitat loss

Getting warmer.

By Ari Phillips
10 July 2015

(Climate Progress) – A major new analysis on the impact melting polar ice sheets could have on sea level rise has given rise to some worrisome conclusions.

Researchers found that sea levels increased some 20 feet during three warming periods of 1.8 to 3.6°F (1 to 2°C) that took place at different interglacial periods over the past three million years. The study’s findings mean that the planet could be in for major sea level rise even if warming is kept to 2°C — a limit that the world is set to exceed without major action on climate change.

Published in the journal Science, the review compiled more than 30 years of research from scientists around the world to show that changes in the planet’s climate and sea levels are closely linked. It found that even a small amount of warming can lead to significant sea level rise.

Andrea Dutton, a geochemist at the University of Florida, led the study. She told ThinkProgress that her team looked at periods of time that took place 125,000, 400,000, and three million years ago in order to get a range of possibilities, as no one will be a perfect analog to the warming period the Earth is experiencing now.

“What’s important to note is that the ice sheets appear to be out of equilibrium with the climate based on what’s happened in the past,” she said.

Last year was the warmest on record — a record that 2015 is on pace to break. The International Energy Agency recently warned that temperatures could jump by as much as 7.7°F (4.3ºC) by 2100 — more than double the amount that caused sea level to rise 20 feet in previous eras. Global average temperatures have already risen almost 1.8°F (1ºC) since the 1880s. […]

“People always talk about the year 2100 when they talk about sea level rise,” she said. “It’s not going to stop then; it will keep rising after. It’s important to realize the decisions we make today will influence that trajectory.”

Sea level rise of 10 or 20 feet could impact hundreds of millions of people living in coastal areas around the world. Many major urban centers — New York City, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Bangkok — would be overcome by the elevated seas. The authors of the study point out that most of Florida has an elevation of 50 feet or less, and Miami averages just six feet about sea level. Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, has some 15 million residents all inhabiting the low-lying coastal delta. […]

When sea levels rise, there are other corollary impacts, including storm surge, erosion and inundation, according to Anders Carlson, an Oregon State University glacial geologist and paleoclimatologist, and co-author of the Science study.

Carlson also said that we are starting to see these changes already.

“It takes time for the warming to whittle down the ice sheets,” he said. “But it doesn’t take forever. There is evidence that we are likely seeing that transformation begin to take place now.”

Carlson told ThinkProgress that “we are nearing one degree Celsius warming,” and that the “worst case scenario is what we are already on.” [more]

Study: We’re Already In The ‘Worst Case Scenario’ For Sea Level Rise

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ABSTRACT: Interdisciplinary studies of geologic archives have ushered in a new era of deciphering magnitudes, rates, and sources of sea-level rise from polar ice-sheet loss during past warm periods. Accounting for glacial isostatic processes helps to reconcile spatial variability in peak sea level during marine isotope stages 5e and 11, when the global mean reached 6 to 9 meters and 6 to 13 meters higher than present, respectively. Dynamic topography introduces large uncertainties on longer time scales, precluding robust sea-level estimates for intervals such as the Pliocene. Present climate is warming to a level associated with significant polar ice-sheet loss in the past. Here, we outline advances and challenges involved in constraining ice-sheet sensitivity to climate change with use of paleo–sea level records.

Sea-level rise due to polar ice-sheet mass loss during past warm periods

Technorati Tags: sea level,coastal erosion,Antarctic,Greenland,ice sheet,glacier,deglaciation,global warming,climate change,Florida,Bangladesh,Arctic,sea ice

Hot down deep

By Mike Carlowicz
10 July 2015

(NASA) – For much of the past decade, a puzzle has been confounding the climate science community. Nearly all of the measurable indicators of global climate change—such as sea level, ice cover on land and sea, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations—show a world changing on short, medium, and long time scales. But for the better part of a decade, global surface temperatures appeared to level off. The overall, long-term trend was upward, but the climb was less steep from 2003–2012. Some scientists, the media, and climate contrarians began referring to it as “the hiatus.”

If greenhouse gases are still increasing and all other indicators show warming-related change, why wouldn’t surface temperatures keep climbing steadily, year after year? One of the leading explanations offered by scientists was that extra heat was being stored in the ocean.

Now a new analysis by three ocean scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory not only confirms that the extra heat has been going into the ocean, but it shows where. According to research by Veronica Nieves, Josh Willis, and Bill Patzert, the waters of the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean warmed significantly from 2003 to 2012. But the warming did not occur at the surface; it showed up below 10 meters (32 feet) in depth, and mostly between 100 to 300 meters (300 to 1,000 feet) below the sea surface. They published their results on July 9, 2015, in the journal Science.

“Overall, the ocean is still absorbing extra heat,” said Willis, an oceanographer at JPL. “But the top couple of layers of the ocean exchange heat easily and can keep it away from the surface for ten years or so because of natural cycles. In the long run, the planet is still warming.”

To understand the slowdown in global surface warming, Nieves and colleagues dove into two decades of ocean temperature records; specifically, they examined data sets compiled from underwater floats and other instruments by the Argo team at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, by the World Ocean Atlas (WOA), and by Japanese scientist Masao Ishii and colleagues. The JPL team found that for most of the decade from 2003–2012, waters near the surface (0–10 meters) of the Pacific Ocean cooled across much of the basin. However, the water in lower layers—10–100 meters, 100–200 meters, and 200–300 meters—warmed.

The animated map at the top of this page shows the trends in water temperatures in various depth layers of the ocean as measured between 2003 and 2012. Areas in red depict warming trends in degrees Celsius per year, while blues depict cooling trends. Warming is most acute between 100–200 meters in the western Pacific and the eastern Indian Ocean. Some areas of the Pacific appear to cool—particularly near the surface and in the eastern half, which correlates well with the cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which has been underway for much of the past 15 to 20 years.

Note that the Atlantic Ocean does not show significant trends at any depth, with warming temperatures in one place counter-balanced by cooling in others. The Atlantic basin is also relatively small compared to the Pacific and does not have as much impact on global temperatures. The JPL team also noted that the temperature signal was neutral or inconclusive at depths below 300 meters, where measurements are relatively sparse.

The figure below depicts the trends in a different way. It represents a cross-section of the top 300 meters of the global ocean and how temperatures changed from 1993 to 2012. Note how there are cooler waters near the surface in several years in the 2000s, but that waters at depth grow much warmer. Note, too, how the overall trend in 20 years goes from a cooling ocean to a significantly warmer ocean.

Nieves, Willis, and Patzert were provoked to launch the study because they wanted a more detailed, nuanced picture of ocean temperatures than is possible with most models. On a broad scale, models can replicate broad and long-term trends in the sea; but on smaller scales of space and time, a lot of the models cannot match real-world conditions. The new findings should help improve models of ocean heat storage and climate impacts on regional scales.

The Pacific Ocean covers nearly one-third of Earth’s surface, so it has an outsized impact on the global thermostat. “As the top 100 meters of the Pacific goes, so goes the surface temperatures of the planet,” said Patzert, a climatologist at JPL. With the surface layer of the ocean being cooler for much of the study period, those waters had a moderating effect on air masses and weather systems on the continents. However, ocean and air temperatures have started to rise swiftly in the past two to three years, which suggests that the cool phase of the PDO and the warming hiatus is over.

“Natural, decadal variability has been with us for centuries, and it continues to have big regional impacts on society,” said Nieves, a JPL scientist with a joint appointment at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We can expect to have more hiatuses in the future, but unless future hiatuses are stronger than usual, they will be less visible due to fast rising greenhouse gases. Right now, the combined effect of the human-caused warming and the Pacific changing to a warm phase can play together and produce warming acceleration.”

Reference

Nieves, V., Willis, J.K., and Patzert, W.C. (2015, July 9) Recent hiatus caused by decadal shift in Indo-Pacific heating. Science, aaa4521.

New Study: Heat is Being Stored Beneath the Ocean Surface

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,ocean

Drought is small also.

By Angela Garbes
8 July 2015

(The Stranger) – Everybody in Seattle knows that summer doesn't typically start until after the Fourth of July. It's when, after months of rain (the infamous "Juneuary"), the clouds finally part and the temperatures rise. But not this year.

Nobody knows this better than local farmers. While people have been jumping in lakes and exuberantly eating strawberries and cherries weeks earlier than usual, farmers—whether they're located in the Snoqualmie Valley, in Island County, or on the Olympic Peninsula—have been wrangling hundreds of thousands of feet of drip irrigation tape (thin, perforated hoses that run along the base of the crop rows) under relentlessly sunny skies.

"This is the hottest, driest spring ever—as in the least amount of rainfall and highest temperatures for May and June," says Jason Salvo, who, along with Siri Erickson-Brown, farms 16 acres of vegetables on their farm, Local Roots, in Duvall. The farm supplies Seattleites with produce through weekly CSA (community supported agriculture) boxes, farmers markets, and restaurants such as Altura, Blind Pig Bistro, Spinasse, Marjorie, Westward, and the Whale Wins.

"Plants just don't perform as expected when they're stressed by both heat and lack of water," says Erickson-Brown. "When it gets really, really hot, tomato blossoms drop. So they won't set fruit because they're like, 'It's a stressful world, I can't make fruit!'"

Plants at Willowood Farm, a 15-acre vegetable farm on Whidbey Island, also can't take the heat. "Right now," says farmer and owner Georgie Smith, "we're picking shelling peas and fava beans. And we have 30 percent less yield than we should have gotten, because they both dropped flowers when it was hot."

"I also grow a ton of garlic, and my garlic has suffered," adds Smith. "Along with the dry weather, I got a rust infestation." Rust, a fungal infection that can be lethal to plants, flourishes during lengthy dry periods and significantly reduced Smith's garlic crop.

"Everyone is feeling the effects of the drought," says Kia Armstrong, sales and promotion manager at Nash's Organic Produce, a 75-acre farm that raises vegetables, grains, seeds, chickens, and pigs near Sequim on the Olympic Peninsula. "This is uncharted territory and extremely severe. Many farms run on river systems, and the rivers are at August levels—or lower."

According to Armstrong, the Dungeness River that Nash's depends on is at a record low. "Usually the Dungeness flows at around 600 cubic feet per second this time of year, but now it's running at around 125 cubic feet per second. And there is literally no snowpack." [more]

How Is Washington's Drought Affecting Local Farms?

Technorati Tags: drought,heat wave,global warming,climate change,North America,agriculture,crop failure,freshwater depletion

Heat is bad

By Jeff Masters 
3 July 2015

(Weather Underground) –  Brutally hot conditions fried portions of three continents during the first three days of July, and four nations have already set all-time July national heat records this month: the Netherlands, the U.K., Thailand, and Colombia. Below is a break-down of the July national heat records set so far this month, courtesy of weather records researcher Maximiliano Herrera.

Europe

The temperature in Maastricht, the Netherlands, hit 100.8°F (38.2°C) on July 2, setting an all-time July heat record for the nation. According to data from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, only two other hotter temperatures have been recorded in the nation: 101.5°F (38.6°C), on August 23, 1944 at Warnsveld, and 101.1°F (38.4°C), on June 27, 1947 at Maastricht. Thanks go to wunderground member cRRKampen for this info. According to to weather records researcher Maximiliano Herrera, three stations in the Netherlands set all-time (any-day) highs Thursday:

• Volkel (Netherlands), 36.9°C
• Twenthe (Netherlands), 36.1°C
• Leeuwarden (Netherlands), 34.0°C

Mr. Herrera notes that the Netherlands' all-time hottest temperature in 1944 was surely beaten on July 2, 2015, but all stations in the warmest area were closed many years ago. For example, the city of Maastricht itself, where Thursday's near-record 100.8°F (38.2°C) was recorded at the airport, is slightly warmer in its downtown (perhaps by 1°C) than at the airport station (which is more elevated), but the town station doesn't exist any longer. He also pointed out that Belgium's official all-time hottest temperature is 101.8°F (38.8°C), measured on June 27, 1947. However, according to the Belgian Meteorological Agency, RMI, this value was likely 2.2°C too high, due to improper measurement techniques. If we make this correction, Belgium's all-time hottest temperature was beaten on Thursday, as well as during the 2003 and 2006 heat waves. And in Paris, which measured its 2nd hottest temperature in its history on July 1 (39.7°C), the Paris Observatory had its grass watered (as it should be), but the grass was never watered for the record value of 40.4°C of 1947. This could have been the difference between the two measurements.

London's Heathrow Airport hit 98.1°F (36.7°C) on July 1, setting an all-time July heat record for the UK. Previous record: 97.7°F (36.5°C) in Wisley on July 19, 2006.

Asia

On July 2, the mercury hit 105.8°F (41.0°C) at Kamalasai, Thailand, setting a mark for the hottest July temperature ever recorded in that nation. Previous record: 104.4°F (40.2°C) at Uttaradit on July 12, 1977. Approximately half of all the reporting stations in Thailand set their all-time July monthly heat records on July 1 or July 2 this year. UPDATE: Today (Friday, July 3), Kamalasai, Thailand bested yesterday's July record with a reading of 106°F (41.1°C).

South America

On July 1, Urumitia, Colombia beat that nation's all-time July national heat record, with a 108°F (42.2°C) reading. Urumitia also set Colombia's all-time June heat record last week on June 27, with a 107.6°F (42.0°C) mark. [more]

All-time July National Heat Records Fall on Three Continents

Technorati Tags: heat wave,global warming,climate change,Europe,South America,Asia

Others are hot to.

By Tim Radford
16 June 2015

LONDON (Climate News Network) – Scientists in California have identified a cold-blooded killer as global warming brings new hazards for ectotherms − creatures that cannot regulate their own body heat.

The suggestion may seem counter-intuitive, as vipers, lizards, fish and frogs all depend on ambient warmth to keep their metabolisms busy. But while endotherms – among them mammals − have ways of keeping themselves cool on hot days, lizards and their like might not be so flexible and could overheat.

Alex Gunderson and Jonathon Stillman, biologists at the Romberg Tiburon Centre for Environmental Studies at San Francisco State University, report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B that they tested their suspicions about overheating risks by combing through 112 published studies that delivered 394 estimates of potential temperature tolerance in 232 species of ectotherm − laboratory species that had been tested in extremes of hot and cold.

Their sample of the cold-blooded living things included amphibians, reptiles, crustaceans and insects, land-dwellers and water-dwellers.

They found evidence that all had some ability to acclimate – that is, adapt to different temperatures – and some, such as fish, crab, lobster and shrimp, had more tolerance to acclimation than others. But, overall, many of them proved less likely to tolerate increasingly extreme climate swings.

“Because animals have some ability to acclimate to higher temperatures, scientists hoped that they might be able to adjust their physiology to keep up with global warming,” Dr Gunderson says.

“We found by compiling these data in the first large-scale study of hundreds of different animals that the amount they can actually adjust is pretty low. They don‘t have the flexibility in heat tolerance to keep up with global warming.”

Global warming and attendant climate change is believed to threaten one species in six with extinction. It can do this by amplifying and adding to a range of existing hazards, threats and pressures such as habitat destruction, or over-hunting, or by changing in a few decades a whole climatic regime to which species have adapted over tens of thousands of years. […]

“Our results suggest that their ability to acclimate to increasing temperatures will not buffer them from the changes that are occurring, and that they are going to have to depend on behavioural or evolutionary change to persist,” Dr Gunderson says. [more]

Temperatures soar to danger point for sun-loving creatures

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ABSTRACT: Global warming is increasing the overheating risk for many organisms, though the potential for plasticity in thermal tolerance to mitigate this risk is largely unknown. In part, this shortcoming stems from a lack of knowledge about global and taxonomic patterns of variation in tolerance plasticity. To address this critical issue, we test leading hypotheses for broad-scale variation in ectotherm tolerance plasticity using a dataset that includes vertebrate and invertebrate taxa from terrestrial, freshwater, and marine habitats. Contrary to expectation, plasticity in heat tolerance was unrelated to latitude or thermal seasonality. However, plasticity in cold tolerance is associated with thermal seasonality in some habitat types. In addition, aquatic taxa have approximately twice the plasticity of terrestrial taxa. Based on the observed patterns of variation in tolerance plasticity, we propose that limited potential for behavioural plasticity (i.e., behavioural thermoregulation) favours the evolution of greater plasticity in physiological traits, consistent with the ‘Bogert effect’. Finally, we find that all ectotherms have relatively low acclimation in thermal tolerance and demonstrate that overheating risk will be minimally reduced by acclimation in even the most plastic groups. Our analysis indicates that behavioural and evolutionary mechanisms will be critical in allowing ectotherms to buffer themselves from extreme temperatures.

Plasticity in thermal tolerance has limited potential to buffer ectotherms from global warming

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,reptile decline,amphibian decline,shellfish decline,insect decline,ecosystem disruption

Whole world dry.

By Leila Carvalho
26 June 2015

(The Conversation) – Exceptional drought, extreme temperatures, unprecedented drops in reservoir levels, and threatening water shortages for millions of people have dominated headlines in California in recent years. Unfortunately, Californians are not the only people being stressed with the “water crisis.”

Citizens of one of the most densely populated areas in South America – the São Paulo metropolitan area (SPMA) in southeastern Brazil – are struggling with one of the nastiest water crises in decades.

With over 20 million people and the main financial and economic center of Brazil, this region is under the influence of the South American monsoon system and receives the largest fraction of its precipitation during the Austral summer, from October to March. Yet in the last four years, rain gauge stations near the most important reservoirs supplying water to the city have been reporting growing deficits in precipitation. Last year saw the worst since at least 1961, which has been followed by another dry year.

To aggravate these conditions, daily records of high temperatures during these summers have increased evapotranspiration, accelerating drought conditions, similar to what has been observed in California.

A planet with over seven billion people and limited freshwater resources is already showing environmental exhaustion and signaling humans have crossed the line of sustainability. Our capacity to mitigate the negative effects of environmental changes and how fast we can adapt is limited by multiple factors. But as a megacity – a complex and often disorganized human conglomerate – the population of São Paulo, Brazil is particularly exposed to the effects of extreme weather events.

The climatic factors influencing the drought in California and in São Paulo are likely interconnected. Cycles in the Pacific sea surface temperature that occur on decadal timescales are coupled to changes in atmospheric circulation that affect weather patterns worldwide. In some regions, atmospheric conditions are such that they block the passage of cold fronts that cause the storms to bring precipitation, changing the path of these rain events. [more]

Megacity drought: Sao Paulo withers after dry ‘wet season’

Technorati Tags: drought,South America,Brazil,global warming,climate change,freshwater depletion,monsoon,California,epidemic

New Record Highs set

30 June 2015 (The Weather Channel) – A torrid heat wave is easing a bit, but will kick into high gear yet again later this week into the July 4th holiday weekend, and possibly beyond.

June record highs have been broken in at least 31 cities in the Northwest, five of which appear to have tied or broken their all-time record highs. The extreme heat is likely to last into next week and may end up breaking records for longevity as well.

An unofficial weather station located in Hell's Canyon along the Oregon/Idaho border (Pittsburg Landing) recorded an incredible 116 degrees for a high Sunday. 

The culprit in this hot setup is a dome of high pressure aloft, surging northwestward to encompass a large area of the western states. The center of this high will shift around through the week ahead, but overall it will remain a dominant feature.

This will allow the sizzling late-June and early-July sun to send temperatures soaring not simply in the typically hot Desert Southwest, but also locations well to the north including the Pacific Northwest, interior Northwest, and northern Rockies. 

Highs well into the 90s and triple digits are expected in many lower-elevation locations west of the Continental Divide and inland from the Pacific Coast.

This includes much of Nevada, California's Central Valley, the Salt Lake Valley, Idaho's Snake River Plain, much of Oregon's lower elevations east of the immediate coast, and areas to the east of the Cascades in Washington State.

In particular, parts of the Columbia Basin and lower Snake River Valley will see particularly extreme and persistent heat. This includes cities such as Yakima, Kennewick and Walla Walla in Washington as well as Lewiston, Idaho, as noted in the records below. Temperatures will get knocked down a bit into the 90s or low 100s to start the new workweek, but will then surge towards the middle or upper 100s again late in the week.

The extreme heat has even surged north into Canada. Cranbrook, in far southeast British Columbia at an elevation of about 3,000 feet, set a new all-time record high of 98 degrees (36.8 degrees Celsius) Sunday, according to The Weather Network. 

Even Revelstoke, British Columbia – 130 miles north of the U.S. border, about 1,500 feet above sea level and better known for skiing – reached an amazing 103 degrees (39.5 degrees Celsius) Sunday. [more]

Western Heat Wave Shatters At Least 31 June Record Highs (FORECAST)

Technorati Tags: California,North America,heat wave,global warming,climate change,Canada