Heat Dome

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Due to scorching heat hundreds of deaths have been reported from Canada and North Western United States.

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The historic heat wave prevailing in the Pacific Northwest has evidently led to hundreds of deaths in Canada, Oregon and Washington as scorching temperatures exploded all-time records.

Temperature record has been broken by more than a degree. It is one of the extreme heat waves that earth has ever seen with a deviation from the typical conditions in this particular part of the world.

Heat Dome is a phenomenon of scorching heat. In this phenomenon hot air is trapped by high-pressure fronts, and as it is forced back to the ground, it heats up even more. This condition prevents the cloud formation, allowing more radiation from sun that hits the ground cause intense heat.

According to the US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a heat dome is formed when strong high-pressure atmospheric conditions unite with weather patterns like La Niña, creating vast areas of scorching heat that get arrested under the high-pressure ‘dome’.

Western Pacific’s temperatures have risen in recent decades as compared to that of the Eastern Pacific, bringing major pressure differences that move winds across the entire ocean. The pressure change leads to warm air, heated by the ocean surface, rise over the western Pacific, and decreases convection over the central and eastern Pacific.

It has been established and proven that rising temperatures would lead to hotter weather and human-made climatic changes are resulting in dangerous weather trends across the world. Heat waves have been a regular phenomenon on land.

However, global warming has caused them to be hotter with a longer duration and an increased frequency.