Posthuman Blues

Killer heat waves here to stay, global warming researchers say

"You can't tie global warming into one single event," he said.

But global warming has made the nights warmer in general and the days drier, which help turn merely uncomfortably hot days into killer heat waves, said Kevin Trenberth, climate-analysis branch chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

Much of global warming science concentrates on average monthly and yearly temperatures, but studies in the past five years show that climate change is at its most dangerous during extreme events, such as high temperatures, droughts and flooding, he said.

"These (heat) events always occur. What global warming does is push it up another notch," Trenberth said.

And the computer models show that soon, we'll get many more -- and hotter -- heat waves that will leave the old Dust Bowl records of the 1930s in the dust, said Ken Kunkel, director of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Illinois State Water Survey.