Heat dome expected to hit seven Arab countries in days

TDT | Manama                 

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Seven Arab countries are expected to be exposed to an unprecedented rise in temperatures within days, sometimes reaching 50 degrees Celsius, coinciding with United Nations warnings that the world as a whole has begun to record the highest recorded temperatures in its history.

Preliminary data published by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) showed on Monday that the first week of July was the hottest week ever this year.

According to the "Arab Weather" platform, air maps show that the hot mass is expected to affect seven Arab countries, namely Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine, as of the end of this week.

The expected rise is due to what is known as the "heat dome", which is caused by the concentration of the seasonal Arabian high in the north of the Arabian Peninsula.

What is a heat dome?

Environmental expert and member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Ayman Qaddouri, explains what a heat dome is and how it is making its impact these days:

• It is a phenomenon that is repeated this summer, and it occurred in the United States about a month ago.

• The thermal dome is a somewhat isolated atmospheric region, generated as a result of the emergence of a high-pressure region in the upper layers of the atmosphere (the stratosphere) due to the relative decrease in temperature compared to the lower layers of the atmosphere (the troposphere), which have a higher temperature.

• With the accumulation of a mass of hot air below a high-pressure area in the upper layers of the atmosphere in the same area, the atmospheric elevation (the high-pressure area) works to push the hot air downward to become compressed, smaller in size, and hotter.

• When the hot air tries to rise upward, the high pressure above it forces it to descend. As a result, the temperature of the air in the lower layer of the atmosphere rises more, by about 5 to 10 degrees.

• The thermal dome lasts from 2 to 7 days and may remain for longer periods.

• The effect of the heat dome disappears in the region in which it appears as soon as any factor in its formation is lost, for example, if pressure decreases in the "stratosphere" layer of the atmosphere.

• Therefore, it is a phenomenon that does not move from one region to another, and at the same time, its formation does not recede from one region to another. It can appear in any region on the surface of the earth once the reasons are available.

• Weather data indicates that there is high pressure and high temperatures these days, which means that there is a heat dome being generated.

The World Meteorological Organisation continues to warn of the impact of climate change and industrial human activities, saying that temperatures are about to exceed record levels on land and in the oceans, with "potentially devastating effects on ecosystems."

WMO's director of climate services, Christophe Hewitt,  at the organization, said: "We are in the unknown, and it can be expected that more record levels will be exceeded with the development of the El Niño phenomenon, and these effects will extend until 2024. This is disturbing news for the world."

The WMO data showed that the first week of July was the hottest week ever this year, which was agreed upon by the Copernicus Climate Monitoring Service in Europe.

Earlier, the WMO had warned that the world would witness record temperatures, the highest in history, during the five years from 2023 to 2027, pointing out that carbon dioxide has reached new high levels, which increases the strength of the global warming phenomenon. Only the shift from fossil fuels to clean energy will limit them.