2021 Pacific Northwest Heat Wave

There's an article in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) titled "As Extreme Heat Becomes More Common, the Unprecedented Pacific Northwest Heat Dome Offers Lessons." It might be paywalled, I'm not sure--I'm on their media list and not sure what I get for that. 

Anyway, it says a few interesting things [sorry/not sorry for the bullet point format]:

• An estimate of the total number of deaths is about 900, 600 of them in British Columbia. "Most of the deceased were older adults who lived alone and died at home."
• Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon together saw about 200 deaths. "There [Portland], the heat dome lasted from June 25 to June 30. Temperatures reached 116°F (46.6°C) in Portland—more than 40°F (4°C) higher than normal
• Except that last number is wrong, it should be 22°C. Strange they would make that error.
• "June 29 reached 121°F, or 49°C, in Lytton, a small town in British Columbia, becoming the hottest day on record in Canada."
• Researchers have since classified the 2021 event as one of a handful of the most extreme heat waves on modern record.
• They link to "The 2021 western North America heat wave among the most extreme events ever recorded globally" in Science Advances 4-May-2022. That's in terms of the deviation from normal, "coming in at over 4 standard deviations" from average.
• Here's a free PDF of the paper.
• They write, "Throughout the globe, where we have reliable data, only five other heat waves were found to be more extreme since 1960."
• "Excess mortality due to extreme heat is well documented, with an average of 6 heat-related deaths per 100,000 residents each year in North America estimated for 2000–2019.
• "We have shown that the western North America event of 2021may have been caused by a combination of high pressure and dry conditions, but it is well known that heat extremes in different parts of the world may be driven by other combinations of Earth system processes." They don't say anything particular about climate change per se related to this event.
• They give the following table for extreme heat waves with standard deviations of 4 or higher, since 1968.

Anyway you can read it if you want. Back to the JAMA article.

• "And this August, researchers reported in JAMA that heat-related deaths in the US have been steadily increasing since 2016." 
• The article talks with an emergency room physician and a director of emergency management. The latter said "We had heard, anecdotally, folks saying, “I called my uncle at 11 in the morning and he was fine. By 10 at night, he was dead.” I think 15% of the fatalities were in homes that had air conditioning. But these were people oftentimes on fixed income who were afraid they couldn’t afford the extra utility bill, so they never turned their air conditioning on."
• He also says, "I think my call to action on this is that we need to find that sense of community again. The thought of someone losing their life in a heat event by themselves in an apartment or in a mobile home that was 125 °F, 130 °F, 140 °F inside is devastating. There’s no reason in a city like Portland, in a metro area like Portland, in a place like the Pacific Northwest, that someone should be alone and suffering without a neighbor or someone being able to come and check on them." But that's exactly the situation I was in. My own fault, really. If I die here no one will notice for weeks, until I start to smell. My poor cat.

Anyway I obviously find this heat event interesting because I lived through it. (And without air conditioning! Nor did I go to anywhere else to cool down.) Others probably not so much. 

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PS: Looking back at it, this is kind of a lousy blog post. Sorry.