This week in the East Bay temperatures will rise into the upper 70s and 80s, a rarity for March weather. Locally, our average daily high temperature in March is in the mid-to-low 60s. Millions of people all across the western United States are under extreme heat warnings as record-breaking heat sweeps over the region.
If it isn’t too bright, go outside and look up, but don’t stay out long enough to get heat exhaustion. The sky is likely going to be clear and cloudless. The weather we are experiencing is due to a phenomenon known as a “heat dome”:a concentration of warm air builds up in an area and is pushed back down by the atmosphere only to grow hotter and build up again. This cycle is forecasted to peak early this week, and cooldown begins on the weekend.
Snowpacks in the Sierra Nevada Mountains are rapidly melting (we are at ~48% of our statewide historical average), so Sierran reservoirs should begin to fill up as the snow melts. This heat dome is also likely to increase wildfire risk. The devastating wildfires in 2021 were caused by a similar heat wave.
Local hydrologist Dr. Bruce McGurk holds many insights into the harrowing effects of climate change. Among them is the prediction that within the next couple of decades the Southern United States “will see month-long periods of over 120-degree peaks every summer. It won’t cool down below 100 at night.” The East Bay is also a region with notably high summertime temperatures which means that we could soon experience similar weather in the not too distant future.
Many experts, including McGurk, feel that this heat wave is an ominous portent of these effects. “In the second week of March, the temperature hitting [the] mid-80s in [Lam]orinda…is crazy. [It]’s just not supposed to happen,” he said. “This is exactly what climate change predictions have said [are] going to happen,” he added.
Sophomore Saibha Virdi thinks that “we’re already seeing the effects [of climate change] but generally it’s going to be hotter. I’m sure that it’s not only going to be really hot, but the climate is going to fluctuate a lot.” She believes that the heat wave “is likely a byproduct of climate change.”
According to Berkeley-based scientist Dr. Maria Brandl, this heat wave “certainly fits in a well-known climate change pattern of abnormally high or low temperatures depending on the area in the US. Scientists have documented that the earth’s global temperature is increasing, and even more alarming is that it’s rising at an increasing rate.”
This heat wave is proof that climate change isn’t waiting to happen; the devastation is already starting, and it’s time to face the truth. Brandl believes that “the human species is headed to extinction…we do not have a high intrinsic ability to adapt quickly.” As a microbiologist she is “convinced that bacteria, which can survive in the most extreme harsh conditions, will be among the few species to survive on the Blue Planet. And no, humans cannot count on [moving to] Mars as a way out.”
Hope for the planet has yet to be lost, however. “Is [the future] hopeless?” muses Orinda educator and conservationist Toris Jaeger. “No. We can all do our part in reversing climate change by the way we live our lives,” she said. Jaeger believes that by “walk[ing] more, driv[ing] less, and help[ing to] restore wetlands and riparian habitat,” a difference can be made. “Climate change won’t go away unless we help do something about it,” she concluded.
This heat wave isn’t the worst thing that could happen to us in the Bay Area. There’s no need to start panicking yet. It’s only hitting the 80s at worst in Lamorinda where most continue to live in the moment and enjoy life generally unaffected by this heat wave.
“It’s T-shirt weather, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to wear one,” said freshman Flynn MacKay, who’s impossible to catch on campus when he isn’t donning his usual attire of a hoodie and jeans. “I don’t really think much is changing, even though there’s climate change.” His overall opinion of global warming? “It exists. Sick.”
