As a local weather scientist and CEO of a local weather expertise firm, I ought to be nice at selecting trip locations with good climate. As a substitute, I’m 0 for two. My household’s final two journeys to Europe—July 2023 and July 2025—each landed squarely in the course of brutal heatwaves.
This most up-to-date European heatwave topped out at 104°F in Florence, exactly coinciding with the 2 days we occurred to be there. It was so scorching that we stayed within the resort with our 1 and 3-year-old children more often than not. It occurred to me that this was precisely the circumstance that folks want climate ensures for, however I digress.
Two brutally scorching household journeys to Europe in a row have me pondering—and anxious—about Mediterranean climates. These climates, which embrace not solely Mediterranean international locations but additionally locations like California (the place I reside), are and have at all times been projected to obtain the brief finish of the local weather change stick. That features brutal heatwaves and wildfires, but additionally very moist storms exacerbated by hotter air’s means to carry extra moisture.
Water performs an enormous function in storing warmth
As knowledgeable, I establish as a local weather scientist. After I was a local weather researcher, I targeted on atmospheric physics and the statistical dynamics of climate, however my levels are literally in oceanography. Why? As a result of water is the heavyweight champion of warmth storage. Water shops about 4.2 instances the quantity of vitality than air per unit weight. Water can also be about 800 instances denser than air. Meaning the identical quantity of water can retailer about 3,400 instances the vitality of the equal quantity of air. Scorching water additionally evaporates extra readily into air, and the quantity of water air can maintain will increase exponentially with temperature.
Climate on Earth is powered by how water within the air modifications between vapor, liquid, and ice. Each time water modifications type, it releases or absorbs warmth, fueling winds, storms, and temperature shifts. And since the ocean is the planet’s largest supply of warmth and moisture, it performs a number one function in deciding when it rains, how robust the winds blow, and the way scorching or chilly it will get.
The good suggestions loop
Relating to this current European heatwave, a current put up by Guido Cioni caught my eye. His glorious visible and accompanying commentary describe how warmth within the higher ocean can get blended down deeper into the water column and saved up as vitality lengthy after a heatwave passes. These anomalies can persist for lengthy durations, deep within the ocean—the ocean operates on vastly completely different timescales than the ambiance—however can reemerge within the ambiance each as persistent international warming on lengthy timescales, and as catastrophic rainstorms on shorter timescales as nicely.
The burning of fossil fuels presently releases about 37 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2)into the ambiance per yr, and has elevated the atmospheric focus of CO2 by about ~50% since 1900. The speed of change continues to be accelerating. CO₂ within the ambiance acts like a thermal blanket: It permits extra of the solar’s vitality than it lets out, slowly warming the ambiance over time. This vitality heats the ambiance and likewise will get blended into the ocean, heating it as nicely. Hotter water evaporates extra water vapor into the air, which is coincidentally capable of maintain extra water as a result of it’s hotter. Whereas lesser recognized, water vapor is, the truth is, a stronger greenhouse gasoline than CO2. This creates a suggestions loop: extra warmth, extra evaporation, extra water vapor, extra warmth.
Scorching air rises, and cools because it does. Since cooler air holds much less water vapor, its relativity humidity rises. When it turns into saturated, it condenses into clouds and rain, releasing warmth because it does. The extra water condolences, the extra warmth is launched, inflicting stronger storms, extra rain, and in any other case extra unpredictable climate. The new get hotter, the moist get wetter, and the dry get dryer, all due to the CO2 we’re emitting and the water that covers three-quarters of our planet.
As each a local weather scientist and somebody who has now twice had household holidays derailed by excessive warmth, I’m reminded that local weather change will not be a distant downside. It’s right here, it’s private, and it’s accelerating. The identical physics I studied in graduate faculty are actually enjoying out in actual time, reshaping the climate in Florence, in California, and all over the place in between. Oceans and ambiance are storing extra vitality than at any time within the final 125,000 years, and that vitality is coming again to us as heatwaves, floods, storms, and fireplace seasons that defy “regular.” The least we will do is put together for that actuality. And essentially the most we will do is figure to alter its trajectory. That’s precisely why I began Wise Climate: to provide vacationers a security internet when nature doesn’t cooperate.
Nick Cavanaugh is founder and CEO of Wise Climate.
