Breaking climate news: hot humid heat domes over Eastern North America, UK, and Europe. Scientist Michael Mann blames changed planetary waves. Gabriele Messori, Uppsala University: “whiplash” combined climate hazards increasing. Body’s heat tolerance lower than we were told. Dr. Daniel Vecellio on “Greatly enhanced risk to humans” as humid heat stress strikes billions of people sooner than expected (repeat interview).

Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (57 MB) or LoFi (14 MB)

 

Listen to or download the show theme song “Hot and Polluted” (3 min)

 

MICHAEL MANN:

RECENT HEAT WAVE AMPLIFIED BY WAVE RESONANCE

Insufferable June heat waves rested over Europe, the UK, and Eastern North America. It is no accident, and they are coming more often. I play is a short interview with Micheal Mann, speaking to the BBC on June 21st.

 

 

It gets stranger. These big bends in the Jet Stream and their blocking patterns are resonating and amplifying in the atmosphere. Which side of the wave are you on? You might get the heat or super rains and flooding. As we hear later in this program with our guest scientist, as warming increases you may get both. Compound climate disasters and quasi-resonant planetary waves – I have the new science for you coming up. But first: hot-and-polluted episodes. They are here, playing on one another and damaging our health.

HOT AND POLLUTED

In June, millions of Americans joined billions across the world struggling with overheated polluted air. Millions die early because of it, some within days of the smoggy heat wave. New York City and most cities in the Northeast just went through a record-smashing event: choking air feeling up to 128 degrees Fahrenheit with the humidity – in June. It was unheard of and unreal.

Even in Toronto, Canada Pearson International airport smashed records with 36 C (about 97 F) on June 23rd, with humidex index reaching up to 46 C. – a “feels-like” temperature of 113 Fahrenheit. The air pollution was “moderate”. I grew up around Toronto, and this level of hot humidity never happened. Ever.

Scientists race to study a new phenomenon: “hot-and-polluted episode (HPE)”. The science of the “hot-and-polluted episode” began with an obscure paper by Steve H. L. Yim in 2020. Steve Hung Lam Yim is from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is a co-author in the new research article (May 2025) titled: “PM2.5-Associated Premature Mortality Attributable to Hot-And-Polluted Episodes and the Inequality Between the Global North and the Global South”

They found the United States, Russia, Japan, and Germany had the highest mortality from hot-and-polluted episodes in the North, but 80% of the deaths were in the global South, the worst being in India. We are beginning to understand heat and air pollution can amplify one another when they impact our bodies, and likely the same for all land creatures. This is new challenge for medicine and public health – and for each of us. Beware of more hot-and-polluted episodes as warming continues to increase.

The study authors also note: “The adverse impacts also extend to cognitive functions, affecting both the mental and physical aspects of the brain.” Combined heat and pollution may cloud our abilities to recognize and respond.

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RESONANCE IN THE ATMOSPHERE

There is another big-picture pattern emerging in a hotter atmosphere. In late June 2025, a huge bend in the Jet Stream took uncharacteristic cool air down into New Mexico and drove hot storms, laden with humidity from a recent Pacific cyclone, into the American East. Another Jet Stream bend brought excessive heat to Europe reaching into the UK. As in Eastern North America, Europe settled under an oppressive heat dome.

Scientists are scurrying to catch up. A new study led by Penn State’s Michael Mann finds heat domes and flooding have nearly tripled since the ’50s. Apparently “large, slow-moving planetary waves in the jet stream – a high-altitude air current that guides weather systems – intensify and become stalled”. This pattern is called a “quasi-resonant amplification” or QRA.

None of this is easy to grasp. But these atmospheric changes exist and shape our experiences of extreme weather here on the surface. The lower atmosphere, the troposphere, is not a smooth expanse of air. It is turbulent, but tends to form large undulating patterns influenced by the rotation of the planet.

The number of peaks and troughs, mappable from space, can shape the weather. They are called Rossby waves or planetary waves. If there are many waves, with their peaks and troughs, like six or more of these waves, they can influence one another by resonance. Resonance is a phenomenon where a vibrating object causes another object to vibrate with a larger amplitude. This happens when the driving frequency matches the natural frequency of the other object – in this case another planetary wave in the atmosphere.

In a September 2024 study, with Mann, Rahmstorf and others, the latest climate projections showed “Increased projected changes in quasi-resonant amplification and persistent summer weather extremes.” And here we are.

A new paper published June 16, 2025 ,led by Xueke Li, with Mann and others, finds we have three times more of this amplified weather state since the 1950’s. They find two basic drivers: amplification of polar heat changing the balance of heat in the atmosphere, and greater differences between ocean and land temperatures. Both are caused by global warming from our added greenhouse gases. We are driving the weather into more hostile states, particularly in summer months.

Latest update: late June heat waves involve QRA, paper’s Lead Author says:

Xueke Li
@xuekeli.bsky.social July 1, 2025

Reply to Michael E. Mann

“QRA has been detected for the period from June 16 to June 25, 2025, based on the best available data. During this time, there is a consistent increase in wave amplitude, reaching a peak of nearly 2 standard deviations.”

NO QRA IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE

Apparently, this wave/heat dome phenomenon is exclusive to the Northern Hemisphere. A QRA set of six or more big waves in the Jet Stream does not occur in the Southern Hemisphere. It does not affect weather in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa or Patagonia. The mechanism relies on the presence of midlatitude waveguides, double jet streams, and specific zonal wind and temperature profiles, which are more pronounced and variable in the Northern Hemisphere due to its extensive landmasses and complex orography.

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FLOODING IN THE FAR EAST

Meanwhile, a team of Chinese scientists have described new weather patterns over the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans. It is called “the Indian-West Pacific ocean capacitor”. One net result is steering more extreme rainfall events into southeast Asia, and China in particular. While New York, London and Rome steam in the heat dome, as Reuters reports June 25, “China, reeling from floods, braces for second tropical cyclone in two weeks”.

 

As “Jim” posted on X:

“Southern China was hit by a rainstorm belt thousands of kilometers long, with the maximum rainfall in northern Guangxi reaching 1,017 mm in five days! Rainstorm will continue in the next 3 days, and many rivers in the Yangtze River and Pearl River basins will burst into floods.”

I got this tip from Earth System Nerd Jan Umsonst in the Frankfurt area of Germany. I follow him on Facebook.

News reports Typhoon Wutip caused epic flooding two weeks ago. Now, before any recovery, or even a complete tally of damages and deaths, another tropical depression loaded with rainfall is coming ashore in South China. Reuters reports:

“Rongjiang in southwestern Guizhou province, half-submerging the city of 300,000 people as fast-rising flood-waters swept away cars, roared into underground garages and malls, and damaged vital infrastructure including its power grid. Affected by the rainfall in Guizhou, rivers in Guangxi downstream remained swollen on Wednesday, state media reported, with one waterway more than 9 metres (30 feet) above levels that are considered safe.”

No time to recover – that is another growing trend in extreme climate events.

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EARTH ENERGY IS IMBALANCED

Underlying waves of extreme weather, Earth’s energy is out of balance. Far more solar energy is staying on the planet than before. Satellites measure incoming solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere, and the amount reflected back into space. They show Earth is now less reflective and so more of the Sun’s heat or energy is staying on this planet, on land sea and air. The loss of reflectivity is partly due to loss of the great mirrors of sea ice at both Poles. Glaciers darkened by pollution are part of it. Deforestation is too. All of that is caused by global warming, as humans fill the atmosphere with more carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases.

A paper published May 10th, 2025 found “Earth’s energy imbalance more than doubled in recent decades.” That was led by Thorsten Mauritsen and 55 co-authors, including many big names in climate science, with authors from many countries. They add: “The large trend has taken us by surprise, and as a community we should strive to understand the underlying causes. Our capability to observe the Earth’s energy imbalance and budget terms is threatened as satellites are decommissioned.”

The best climate models simply did not predict Earth’s return of energy into space would fall in half. The study authors say:

“The root cause of the discrepancy between models and observations is currently not well known, but it seems to be dominated by a decrease in Earth’s solar reflectivity (Goessling et al., 2024; Stephens et al., 2022), and model experiments suggest it could be due to poorly modeled sea surface temperature patterns, the representation and emissions of polluting aerosol particles, or something else (Hodnebrog et al., 2024).”

“Earth’s Energy Imbalance” is unlikely to reach any election cycle or mainstream talking points. But all told, with the new dirty heat waves and record-breaking floods, this may be the biggest story in all human history.

This is new to all of us. None of us learned about it in school. Even experts did not know. Please follow up for yourself, so you can pass breaking climate knowledge on to others. You can find links to all the news and science I just talked about in my show blog, published Wednesdays at ecoshock.org. Most of the links are free, open access.

Check out this LiveScience article about this paper here.

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COMPOUND CLIMATE DISASTERS

GABRIELE MESSORI

Heat waves, droughts and fires may soon hit together as new normal. This alarming news comes in a new study of climate hazards by scientists in Sweden and Europe. Call it “weather whiplash”, but future extremes come as pairs of harsh events with never-before seen heatwaves leading the way.

The dire forecast was led by Dr. Gabriele Messori. Gabriele is an atmospheric physicist, leading a research group at Uppsala University in Sweden. He is also Director of the Swedish Centre for Impacts of Climate Extremes.

Listen to or download this 15 minute interview with Gabriele Messori in CD Quality

 

He is Lead Author of the new paper “Global Mapping of Concurrent Hazards and Impacts Associated With Climate Extremes Under Climate Change”. That is Open Access in the journal AGU Earth’s Future, published June 4, 2025.

The authors definition of a compound event demands at least two hazard impacts, at the same location, but not necessarily at the same time, as one might follow another. The one-two climate punch immediately reminds me of Asheville North Carolina in September 2024. Hurricane Helene blew the place down, then the big flood came. Even worse, they found scenarios where serious climate-related compound events could come back every year.

The paper says: “in a medium-high emission scenario, both heatwaves and wildfires thus become the norm in many regions.” Crops could be ruined year after year, or several times in ten years.

By most assessments, humans are currently polluting the atmosphere at the worst levels, like the IPCC 8.5 pathway. Even in a lower range, the authors found “a clear shift to a world dominated by compound hazards/impacts”. That sounds like a different, far more difficult world than anything in previous history.

In 2021, I interviewed Gabriele’s co-author Wim Thiery in Brussels. He led the Science paper with 36 co-authors titled “Intergenerational inequities in exposure to climate extremes”. In this new work, we learn extreme events will combine in dangerous ways during our children’s lives – because of fuels WE burned. There you have it, intergenerational injustice – but now worse with this new research.

HEAT IS THE MASTER HAZARD

Wildfires are front and center every summer now in the Northern Hemisphere. But these scientists find as coming decades unfold: heatwaves increase more than fires, and extreme heat grows more than flooding. It sounds like growing heat is the master hazard, so to speak.

One of three new papers Garbriele just published in June is a case study of a strange climate-related combination: a Saharan Dust storm hitting Europe in March 2024 along with floods in Portugal. Scientists think these dust storms dampen hurricane development. Dust storms may explain the absence of early hurricanes in the Caribbean and the U.S. so far this year. Only one named Hurricane formed in June. It was far out in the Atlantic, affecting no one but the fish.

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YOUR BODY TOLERANCE FOR HEAT

  • LESS THAN WE WERE TOLD

“In the future, moist heat extremes will lie outside the bounds of past human experience and beyond current heat mitigation strategies for billions of people.”

– Vecellio et al. PNAS 2023

New tested science shows your body’s heat tolerance is much lower than experts assume. Dr. Daniel J. Vecellio warns of “Greatly enhanced risk to humans” as humid heat stress strikes billions of people sooner than expected. The paper in the prestigious journal PNAS is: “Greatly enhanced risk to humans as a consequence of empirically determined lower moist heat stress tolerance.”

Listen to or download my interview with Daniel Vecellio in CD Quality or Lo-Fi  [28 min]

 

For decades, we have been told the danger point for the human body is known. It is 35 degrees C of wet bulb temperature – a mixture of heat and humidity. But that was not tested. Vecellio and his colleagues basically put volunteers in rooms and turned up the heat, the humidity, or both. It, it was not necessary to heat the experimental volunteers to the level of medical emergency. They just needed to establish the conditions beyond which the body begins to heat up and can’t stop, almost like a physiological tipping point.

With Europe in shock from extreme heat in early summer, it’s a good time to revisit this interview from the Ecoshock show “Destabilized Weather in an Unstable World” posted October 18, 2023. Check out that blog for details on how the human body really deals with heat, and great science to prove it.

Destabilized Weather in an Unstable World

FROM THIS PAPER (Vecellio et al. 2023):

“Heatwaves are associated with increased hospitalization and death for cardiovascular, respiratory, and renal ailments as well as diabetes. These specific outcomes are not solely due to the body becoming too hot, but rather are compounded by the physiological strain extreme heat puts on the body and the body having to compensate to cool itself. Direct heat-related death (i.e., heat stroke) occurs when the core (internal) temperature of the body becomes too high due to the fact that it no longer has the capability to cool itself and biological functions cease.

It increases the risk of both morbidity and mortality in vulnerable groups such as the elderly, children, outdoor workers, and those with comorbidities or those taking medication that causes diminished thermoregulatory capabilities.”

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HEAT IN PARIS

Marshall Shepherd
@drshepherd2013.bsky.social

From my cousin who lives in Paris. Says it is 80 deg F right now at 1 am…That type of heat there will kill the most vulnerable of people,

Felicia A. Henderson
@feliciahenderson.bsky.social

Temps over 100°F predicted for Paris today. This city isn’t built for this heat. AC is v. limited in both public & private spaces. Even when they have it, folks don’t always know how it works. For ex my bus has AC but pep[;e keep opening the windows despite decals saying “keep window closed.”

Alex: plus European homes were built to retain heat, not release it.

Lethal heat is Europe’s new climate reality

Politico reports:

“Some 4,500 people could die in the next three days due to soaring temperatures, an expert said.

Southern Europe is in the midst of a soaring heatwave with temperatures reaching up to 46 degrees Celsius in Spain’s Huelva region — a new national record for June. Meanwhile, Italy, Greece, Portugal and the Western Balkans are also facing scorching highs, along with wildfires and civilian victims.

A World Health Organization expert issued a stark warning on Monday, calling for more action to stop tens of thousands of “unnecessary and largely preventable deaths.”

“As for how many people could be at risk, Pierre Masselot, a statistician at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told POLITICO this heatwave could cause more than 4,500 excess deaths between June 30 and July 3. The countries likely to experience the highest excess death rates are Italy, Croatia, Slovenia and Luxembourg, he said. “The worst days will likely be [Tuesday] and Wednesday.”

Heat claims more than 175,000 lives across the WHO’s Europe region — spanning from Iceland to Russia — each year. A major study co-authored by Masselot and published in January, which covered 854 European cities, warned that deaths from heat would rise sharply if significant climate adaptation is not prioritized.”

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FIRST TROPICAL COUNTRY TO LOSE ALL IT’S GLACIERS

Mongabay
@mongabay.com

In 2023, La Corona, Venezuela’s last standing glacier in the Sierra Nevada de Mérida National Park, was reclassified as an ice field, having shrunk to the size of barely two football fields. The country is now the first tropical nation to lose all of its glaciers.

Communities and ecosystems in Venezuela learn to adapt to life after glaciers

SEE: “Communities and ecosystems in Venezuela learn to adapt to life after glaciers” by María Fernanda Rodríguez and Jeanfreddy Gutiérrez Torres, 30 Jun 2025.

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It’s been a firehose of disaster news on the climate front. Thank you for helping to keep Radio Ecoshock going!  And thank you for listening again this week.

Alex