Flavio Lehner

Climate scientist and assistant professor of earth and atmospheric science

Cornell University climate scientist Flavio Lehner studies changes in temperature and precipitation and its associated impacts such as heatwaves, droughts and compounded extreme events.

Lehner says: 

“Climate change is further boosting the temperature of essentially every heatwave we observe today. In other words, had the same weather pattern occurred 50 or 100 years ago, it would have also resulted in a heatwave, but one that was a bit cooler.

“In the West and into the North Plains, where the heatwave passed through this weekend, several all-time records were broken. In many places, this was a dry heat but also came with high nighttime temperatures, due to the ‘trapping’ of heat near the surface during a heat dome. The West, in many places, is still very dry from the lack of snow and rain this spring, such that a lot of the sun’s energy goes into heating the air rather than evaporating water. This lets the heat build up more quickly and likely worsened temperatures a bit in these regions. Essentially, we have climate extremes compound from one season to the next.

“The heat dome is projected to park itself over the Northern Midwest region, which is a little further north than is common for these events, though definitely not unprecedented. As the heat dome sits and builds, it will end up affecting a large portion of the U.S. and Southern Canada population due to hitting cities like Chicago, Toronto and New York City. While North America generally has good AC penetration, this heatwave might still affect people who do not usually have AC due to living in traditionally relatively cooler regions.”

Alistair Hayden

Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Public & Ecosystem Health

Alistair Hayden is a professor of practice in public and ecosystem health and a former division chief at the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. Hayden is developing an online planning tool and disaster exercises to help agencies nationwide build better plans for extreme heat. He can speak to how this heatwave may compare to one in 2021 in the Pacific Northwest, which led to unprecedented occurrences across different sectors like agriculture, hospitals, and transportation infrastructure.