Lurcury hits record highs in the United States. Like France, the American Southwest is hit by an episode of very hot weather this weekend. As related by Guardian, Sunday, June 12, several major cities in the region are suffocating under extremely high temperatures. This is particularly the case in Phoenix, where residents have endured up to 46 ° C, a record since 1918.
Another record, dating from 1956, was broken in Las Vegas. With 46°C recorded, the temperature could even rise in the coming days, according to the US National Weather Agency. Ditto in Colorado, in Denver, where the mercury reached 38 ° C. It is also a double record: that of the highest temperature since 2013 and the earliest day of the year to reach 38°C. An almost bearable heat, when compared to the leaden sky of Death Valley, California, with its 50 ° C recorded on Saturday.
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The planet keeps heating up
High temperatures are commonplace in the American desert. However, these record heat episodes are not to be taken lightly. As reminded by Guardian, this phenomenon causes more deaths than any other environmental disaster, such as hurricanes, floods or tornadoes. In 2021, the historic heat wave in western Canada and the United States resulted in the death of 700 people, due to violent fires.
The Californian authorities are therefore particularly vigilant about the dangers of this new heat wave when almost the entire state is in a state of drought, often extreme, even “exceptional”. A law should soon be adopted in California to establish a general warning system in the event of extreme heat waves, as there are for hurricanes or tornadoes in other regions of the United States. Due to greenhouse gases generated by human activities, mainly fossil fuels, the planet has already warmed around 1.1°C since the pre-industrial era. In California, average temperatures during the summer are now 1.6°C above their level at the end of the 19th century.e century.
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