2020 May Be The Hottest Year On Record. Here’s The Damage It Did

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A pedestrian uses an umbrella to get some relief from the sun as she walks past a sign displaying the temperature on June 20, 2017 in Phoenix, Arizona.

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Climate-driven disasters — hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves, droughts and floods — affect every region of the U.S., but poor people and poor places suffer disproportionately. Around the world, climate change is exacerbating inequality.

As President-elect Joe Biden assembles a new administration that promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help people across the country, and around the world, adapt to global warming, NPR’s Climate Team asked climate scientists what lessons can be learned at the end of another hot year.

Dangerous heat waves that don’t let up

Weather reports across the Southwest this year featured one number, over and over: 100 degrees.

That’s because many cities endured lengthy stretches of relentless heat, breaking long-term temperature records. Phoenix, Arizona experienced a record-breaking 145 days above 100 degrees, the repeated, sustained heat waves made worse by a lack of rain. The city also had 15 days above 115 degrees, double the previous record.

«Basically almost everything set records, says Marvin Percha, meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Phoenix. «I’ve lived here a long time. I grew up here in the 70s and I’ve never seen anything quite like this.

Heat can have deadly consequences. Phoenix also broke the record for the number of heat-related deaths, with almost 300 people dying. Some were killed directly by the heat, while others suffered from cardiac and respiratory problems triggered by heat stress.

Cities, with their vast amounts of concrete, also experience higher temperatures than surrounding areas — what’s known as the «urban heat island effect. Nighttime temperatures are warming faster than daytime temperatures, which provides less respite from the heat. Other cities like Palm Springs and Sacramento, Calif. also broke their records for the number of days above 100 and 90 degrees, respectively.

Palm Springs was the hottest location in the country today, with a high of 109 F.

This is the 146th 100+ F day so far this year (previous *annual* record was 135 days). Tomorrow will make day 147.

For context, 109 F is 20 degrees above normal for this date. https://t.co/truJqtOEP7

— NWS San Diego (@NWSSanDiego) October 16, 2020

Climate scientists say even small changes in average temperature translate to large increases in extremes. Drought and heat feed a vicious spiral, drying out soils and plants which then lead to hotter air temperatures around them.

«Certainly with the overall warmer Earth it makes it more likely to get these extremes temperatures, Percha says.

The Arctic is heating up fast. But exactly how fast?

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Cracks in the Arctic sea ice are important for satellite-based measurements of the ice’s thickness. They also pose challenges for ship-based researchers participating in the MOSAiC expedition.

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But the climate models that scientists use to predict the future do not accurately predict how quickly ice in the Arctic is melting.

«Many models seem to have difficulties in reproducing what we’re seeing in the Arctic, says Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen, a climate scientist at the University of Copenhagen.

Faced with obviously rapid Arctic warming, scientists are trying to figure out why that is. Climate models are particularly crucial in the Arctic because there is less directly observed data available.

In a 2020 study, Hesselbjerg Christensen and his colleagues analyzed how quickly the Arctic is warming now compared to dramatic temperature changes in the distant past, such as when the last Ice Age ended, and found that what’s happening now is comparably fast. «The amount of warming that’s taking place is quite comparable to what happened at the top of Greenland like 30,000 years ago, he says. «This is almost as abrupt as anything gets.

Now, scientists like Hesselbjerg Christensen are trying to understand what that means for the future, and whether the past could help them design climate models that reflect what’s actually happening in the Arctic.

«It’s not about what happens this year, Hesselbjerg Christensen says. «It’s about what happens next year and the year after and the year after that.

Wildfires shattered records across the West

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More than 9 million acres burned across the West in 2020, including the fast-moving Glass Fire in California.

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Climate scientists say as temperatures continue to rise, the West will see more and more days with high fire danger due to a «thirstier atmosphere.

«That’s what we saw this year, says Dan McEvoy, climatologist with the Western Regional Climate Center and Desert Research Institute. «We saw a record high and it was almost double compared to the previous record. So we’re seeing this play out in real time.

With the potential for catastrophic fires only increasing, fire experts say Western communities must reduce the risk where they can. That means changing their relationship with fire by using it as a tool. Setting controlled burns in the winter season can help reduce overgrown fuels, as Native American tribes have done for millennia.

Making homes and buildings more resistant to fire with better building materials gives them a chance to survive wildfires or at least slow them down. While that’s required in risky areas in California, many Western states have failed to institute wildfire building codes.

Given the speed of wildfires this past year, evacuation plans are more critical than ever.

«Fire on the landscape in the West is normal, McEvoy says. «We need that fire. But the thing that’s changing is the rate that they spread and how quickly they become these large mega-fires.

Hotter ocean water is bad news in so many ways

Ocean warming was also on full display in 2020, and it was messy.

Sections of the Indian Ocean, the Pacific and the Caribbean all had their hottest years ever. Most of the Earth’s ocean area was much warmer than average.

Hotter water meant more powerful storms. Warm water on the ocean surface helps storms gain energy as they form, which leads to more destructive wind and storm surge. Hot ocean water also endows some storms with enormous amounts of moisture that falls as rain when the storm hits land.

Notes
The water in the Gulf of Mexico was consistently hotter than normal during peak hurricane season. The hot water helped fuel a record-breaking number of powerful storms.

Credit: NOAA

Record-breaking heat in the Bay of Bengal helped power a devastating cyclone that hit India and Bangladesh in May. By the time the Atlantic Hurricane season began in June, the water in the Gulf of Mexico was also heating up.

That helped fuel a record-breaking number of rapidly intensifying hurricanes whose wind speeds got about 35 miles per hour faster in 24 hours or less. Wind speed indicates how powerful a hurricane is, so the 10 storms that rapidly intensified in 2020 all gained a lot of power very quickly, which made it more difficult for people in their path to prepare.

Climate scientists expected hotter water to lead to more rapidly intensifying storms, but 2020 was still surprisingly prolific. «This season has just been something that no one could have believed, says Rebecca Morss, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. «Watching those hurricanes rapidly intensify in the Gulf [of Mexico] is just crazy.

The hot water was also bad news for fisheries. Fish and other marine creatures are moving farther and farther to find water that is the appropriate temperature for them, according to a study by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published this year. That’s disruptive for the migrating animals themselves, and for humans and other animals that prey on marine species.