Southern California\u2019s swampy summer is setting new records, with humidity levels creating conditions that feel more like Florida than the West Coast.<\/p>\n
Forecasters attributed the punishing humidity to the remnants of Tropical Storm Iselle moving over the state, as well as unusually warm ocean temperatures due to a combination of a months-long marine heat wave, a powerful El Ni\u00f1o and climate change.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s made an intense summer of heat particularly miserable. This week saw new heat records set in some areas, but it\u2019s the humidity that has many at their wits end.<\/p>\n
Dew points in the Los Angeles Basin have been \u201creally high,\u201d hovering around 70 degrees in many places, with a few coastal areas like Redondo Beach and Torrance reaching 73 to 75 degrees on Friday, said Ryan Kittell, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. The metric measures the moisture content in the air.<\/p>\n
The Orlando International Airport, by comparison, recorded a dew point of 72 degrees Friday afternoon, although that was expected to rise to 75, said meteorologist Melissa Watson of the National Weather Service in Melbourne.<\/p>\n
Dew points above 65 degrees are considered to be muggy and somewhat uncomfortable, those above 70 feel very humid and uncomfortable, and those above 75 are oppressive, according to the Weather Service.<\/p>\n
Farther south in Imperial County, a weather station along the western shore of the Salton Sea recorded a dew point of 81 degrees Thursday afternoon, according to Gabriel Lojero, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Phoenix. That\u2019s \u201cprobably one of the higher values\u201d recorded there, but meteorologists don\u2019t have a long period of registered climate data for that area so it\u2019s hard to say, he added. The National Weather Service does not typically keep records of dew points.<\/p>\n
The humidity has driven record-high overnight temperatures, with Burbank, Camarillo, Long Beach, the Los Angeles International Airport, Oxnard, Paso Robles, Santa Barbara, Woodland Hills, Anaheim, Santa Ana, Riverside, Big Bear and Idyllwild, among at least a dozen other places, all breaking daily minimum temperature records for the 24-hour period stretching from midnight Thursday to Friday, according to preliminary Weather Service data.<\/p>\n
In Palm Springs, the overnight low was 90 degrees, beating a record of 89 set in 2011.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s because water content in the air acts like a blanket that keeps the heat close to the ground, preventing conditions from cooling off at night,\u201d Kittell said. \u201cBelieve it or not, water vapor is actually the most potent and efficient greenhouse gas.\u201d<\/p>\n
The same is true when it comes to people: Since muggy air can hold less moisture, the sweat on a person\u2019s body doesn\u2019t evaporate as swiftly, which makes it harder to cool off.<\/p>\n
The abnormally high overnight temperatures have been exacerbating the risk of heat stress and heat-related illness, said Sam Zuber, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not looking at record-breaking high temperatures,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s the overnight lows not cooling off like they should and not giving us a reprieve from the heat in the daytime that are driving heat impacts across Southern California right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sea surface temperature at the Scripps Pier in La Jolla hit 76.8 degrees Thursday, approaching a daily record of 77 degrees set in 2015.<\/p>\n
\u201cOcean heat waves, just like terrestrial heat waves, have been getting more frequent, more intense and longer lasting\u201d as a result of global climate change, said Alexander Gershunov, a research meteorologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd when we look at El Nino, it\u2019s a natural pattern, but it\u2019s happening in an unnaturally warming world,\u201d Gershunov said.<\/p>\n
The rate at which water evaporates from a wet surface, like the ocean, is controlled by the temperature of the surface, so when the ocean is hotter more water is going to be evaporated from it resulting in higher humidity levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat vapor in the coastal zone is going to make conditions more humid,\u201d Gershunov said. \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s making our heat waves more humid and that\u2019s what\u2019s keeping temperatures much hotter at night.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Southern California\u2019s swampy summer is setting new records, with humidity levels creating conditions that feel more like Florida…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1030235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[2529,411999,1582,276,23512,411997,723,5208,2096,411998,2961,224,5337,34703,6231,77840,54974,104813,2549,1176],"class_list":["post-1030234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-air","tag-alexander-gershunov","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-degree","tag-dew","tag-florida","tag-friday","tag-heat","tag-l-a-humidity","tag-la","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-meteorologist","tag-national-weather-service","tag-new-record","tag-oxnard","tag-ryan-kittell","tag-southern-california","tag-summer"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117175238458610181","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1030234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1030235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1030234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1030234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1030234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}