Nighttime heat waves quadruple in Pacific Northwest

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/07/19/nighttime-heat-waves-quadruple-in-pacific-northwest/

[font face=Serif]July 19, 2013

[font size=5]Nighttime heat waves quadruple in Pacific Northwest[/font]

By Hannah Hickey

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University of Washington research shows that the region west of the Cascades saw only three nighttime heat waves between 1901 and 1980, but that number quadrupled to 12 nighttime heat waves in the three decades after 1980, according to a paper published in the July issue of the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.

Nighttime heat waves are when the daily low is in the top 1 percent of the temperatures on record – in Seattle above around 61.5 F – for at least three nights in a row.

“In general, minimum daily temperatures have been warming faster than maximum temperatures, so we’re not surprised to see a trend in the minimum events,” said corresponding author Karin Bumbaco, a research scientist at the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean. “Still, we were surprised to see this significant increase in the frequency of nighttime heat waves.”

She and co-author Nicholas Bond, both with the Office of the Washington State Climatologist, began the investigation after fielding questions during the July 2009 heat wave, which broke temperature records and led to a local run on fans and air conditioners. People wanted to know how that event compared with others in the history books.

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K. Bumbaco / UW
Nighttime heat waves of three days or more between 1901 and 2009. The colors represent different ways of processing the historical readings.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-12-094.1

[phantom power]

1. It's almost like something is holding the heat in...

you know, like a... a... on the tip of my tongue.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. Taste buds?

No, that can’t be right…