Heat wave to hit Los Angeles this year: expert
7/1/2007 11:15
Los Angeles, struck by record-breaking high temperatures last summer, will
be hit again by heat waves this summer, an expert predicted. Temperatures in
Los Angeles will be even higher this year than over the torrid summer of 2006,
climatologist Bill Patzert said. "We are going to suffer," said Patzert, who
works at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, near Los Angeles. Last
summer's sizzling heat was only "a preview of coming attractions", he said in
remarks published by Friday's Daily News. "There's definitely a disturbance
in the force on global temperatures.Between hot days and heat waves on the rise,
we're looking at hotter temperatures this summer in Los Angeles," he
said. The nation's leading climatologists endorsed a prediction made Thursday
by British scientists that a resurgent El Nino, coupled with persistently high
levels of greenhouse gases, will likely make this year the hottest on record,
the Daily News reported. Britain's Meteorological Office forecast a 60
percent chance that 2007 would surpass the global record set in 1998 of 1.20
degrees over the long-term average. "In general, temperatures will continue
to rise as greenhouse gases increase, and El Ninos add an extra boost," Tom
Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, said in concurring with the
British prediction, according to the Daily News. "With each succeeding El Nino
event, we are more likely than not to set new record global
temperatures." Last year, 160 Californians died during a heat wave. In
July, highs in Woodland Hills of Los Angeles topped 100 degrees for a record
three consecutive weeks. On July 22, temperatures at Pierce College topped out
at 119 degrees, a Los Angeles County record.
Xinhua
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