Image: Creative Commons under Unsplash

Let’s state the obvious and get it out of the way. It’s hot out there. Yeah, it’s summer, and summer is typically hot, but it has, as a matter of fact, been “hotter than [usual in] July” (hat tip to Stevie Wonder) across much of the globe.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of daily temperature records in cities and towns around the world have been set during the present heatwaves, which, in some locations, have persisted for an extended period. The heat waves are real. I say heat waves because it is not a single global event but a series of regional ones.

Why now? For many progressive, bloviating politicians and alarmed reporters in mainstream media, the answer is simple: climate change. In the immortal and insightful words of H. L. Mencken, “For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

Climate change is a complex, long-term phenomenon, driven by a combination of numerous factors at different locations during different time periods. We can debate the causes of the modest warming of the past 150 to 170 years until we are blue in the face: the extent to which human greenhouse gas emissions contribute to it; the extent to which present measured temperatures are an artifact, at least in part, of the urban heat island effect—as was recently revealed in Houston and Phoenix; deforestation; solar activity; large ocean circulation patterns; and so forth. But the truth is, a recently warming world serves as a backdrop or baseline for the recent heatwaves; it is not their cause. The question is, what accounts for the large temperature spikes this summer—which are widespread, but not universal?

It turns out a confluence of overlapping weather and meteorological events, some having global or hemispheric effects, some more localized, occurring simultaneously, account for the ongoing heatwaves (a series of similar but disconnected heatwaves, which the media has misleadingly treated as a single related event) this summer.

One event that is contributing to a global rise in temperatures this year, and likely will for the next few years, is the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai volcanic eruption, described in more detail below. Water vapor makes up the vast majority of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, 98 percent or more, and the subsea Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai eruption added an additional 10 percent to 13 percent to atmospheric water vapor. Scientists from NASA and the European Space Agency agree this huge addition to the dominant atmospheric greenhouse gas is contributing significantly to this year’s temperatures.

In addition, El Niño is back, and it’s a strong one. Before the U.S. summer heatwave struck and the ever climate-obsessed mainstream media focused on climate change as the reason behind it to the exclusion of almost every other factor, the media was warning that with the shift from  La Niña to El Niño hotter temperatures would result. Commenting on the role El Niño is playing in the present warming, Michael Wysession, Ph.D., of Washington University in St. Louis, writes at The Conversation:

El Niño is a climate phenomenon that occurs every few years when surface water in the tropical Pacific reverses direction and heats up. That warms the atmosphere above, which influences temperatures and weather patterns around the globe.

Essentially, the atmosphere borrows heat out of the Pacific, and global temperatures increase slightly. This happened in 2016, the time of the last strong El Niño. Global temperatures increased by about 0.25 F (0.14 C) on average, making 2016 the warmest year on record. A weak El Niño also occurred in 2019-2020, contributing to 2020 becoming the world’s second-warmest year.

Heartland and other groups held a press briefing in early July, when the El Niño was officially declared, warning that as summer heated up, the mainstream media would largely begin to ignore  El Niño’s role in present temperatures, focusing instead on climate change. Our concerns proved prescient. As heatwaves began setting local records, discussions of El Niño’s role disappeared, and climate change claimed the headlines. The media was right in the spring, they are wrong now. El Niño, a cyclical event, is contributing to this year’s hot summer. By contrast, there is no evidence climate change is more than a baseline against which the current spike in temperatures is occurring.

One little-discussed factor affecting this summer’s temperatures is the increasingly active sun. After a period of relative quiescence with little solar activity, the sun has become active again. An active sun has a direct, if modest, effect on the Earth’s temperatures. Some scientists also claim it has larger indirect effects because of its impact on cosmic rays, but that’s a discussion for another time. The point is, Sol’s recent increase in activity is contributing to this summer’s heatwaves.

Regionally, a variety of entirely natural weather patterns have also contributed to warming and even below-normal temperatures in some areas.

Across parts of the western and southeastern United States, and in southern and central Europe, heat domes or “blocking patterns” formed and persisted. As CNN described the situation, “[an]  enormous, relentless stubborn ridge of high pressure has trapped air inside in a ‘heat dome’ resulting in extreme temperatures as the dome parks itself over areas.”

The blocking patterns in Europe trapped a heat dome there as it did in the western U.S. In addition, in early July, the jet stream shifted. These two meteorological events combined to deliver colder-than-average, even fall-like temperatures in northern Europe and across the United Kingdom, in July and into August, while locking in, for an extended period of time, extreme summer temperatures in a large swath of southern European nations abutting or near the Mediterranean Sea.

Yet one more factor contributing to hotter-than-average temperatures over much of the globe this summer is the changes in the ocean circulation patterns in the North Atlantic. In a complex story explained by Judith Curry, Ph.D., and Jim Johnstone, it seems that sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic are unusually high this summer, due largely to a period of rapid warming that began around March-April. That period of warming was brought about by significant changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation and weak surface winds, limiting ocean currents and surface mixing. The resulting increase in Atlantic Ocean temperatures has been hyped in the media, but, of course, wrongly linked to long-term climate change rather than weather anomalies of the type that naturally occur every so often.

In short, there is a complex explanation for the complex weather patterns that have prevailed this summer. Multiple geologic, solar, meteorological, and atmospheric events have occurred simultaneously, resulting in unusually high summer temperatures obtaining over much of the world. Fossil fuel use does not cause volcanic eruptions, oceanic and wind current shifts, or changes in solar activity, thus, climate change cannot fairly be blamed for the present pattern of heatwaves, which long-term data show have not increased.

This piece originally appeared at HeartlandDailyNews.com and has been republished here with permission.