Join an online chat with SA's David Biello, who has covered the energy and climate beat since 1999 and will answer your questions about the science behind this week's heat wave in the eastern and midwestern U.S.
June 21, 2012?|
Image: NOAA
Several temperature records were broken along the East Coast on Tuesday, with the mercury reaching into the high 90s at all three New York City airports and parts further north, such as Burlington, Vt., where residents and businesses are ill-prepared for such heat. The heat wave is expected to continue through the end of the work week along the Eastern Seaboard, and severe storms are parked over the Midwest, causing floods in Duluth, Minn.
Hot weather is an often overlooked cause of death worldwide and in the U.S., especially in low-income urban areas where residents might lack air-conditioners. In fact, high heat is the number one weather-related cause of death in the U.S. In an average year,?heat kills more people?than floods, hurricanes, lightning and tornadoes combined, according to the National Weather Service.
This year has already brought higher temperatures than normal nation-wide, and that trend is expected to continue, in part due to global warming which is caused by rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The gases come primarily from coal-fired power plants and automobile exhaust. In the absence of efforts to curtail those emissions, should we expect more heat waves and other extreme weather this summer??
Join us below at 1:30 PM Eastern today (Thursday, June 21) to learn more during a live 30-minute online chat at Scientific American?with David Biello, an energy and environment editor at SA for more than six years. We will turn on the capacity to log-in to the chat box below around 1:20 PM EDT.
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