What are the top 5 cities for heat waves this summer?
There is no single answer. Heat waves can be ranked by intensity or duration, and the temperatures that define a “heat wave” vary by location. Even a station-by-station analysis of temperature data wouldn’t give a definitive answer, since the weights assigned to the different factors would be entirely subjective, as would the definition of “city.” While it may be impossible to pick the 5 worst heat waves of 2009 on a city-by-city basis, doing so on a regional basis is less problematic, mainly because the number of candidates is reduced by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude. Cities in these areas can then be used as examples, although microclimatic factors can create large temperature differences over relatively short distances. For prolonged, widespread, record-breaking heat, the top two heat waves of 2009 have been in southeast Australia and northwestern North America, in that order. Multiple all-time records were broken in each case; major cities include Melbourne and Seattle, respectively,
There is no single answer. Heat waves can be ranked by intensity or duration, and the temperatures that define a “heat wave” vary by location. Even a station-by-station analysis of temperature data wouldn’t give a definitive answer, since the weights assigned to the different factors would be entirely subjective, as would the definition of “city.” While it may be impossible to pick the 5 worst heat waves of 2009 on a city-by-city basis, doing so on a regional basis is less problematic, mainly because the number of candidates is reduced by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude. Cities in these areas can then be used as examples, although microclimatic factors can create large temperature differences over relatively short distances. For prolonged, widespread, record-breaking heat, the top two heat waves of 2009 have been in southeast Australia and northwestern North America, in that order. Multiple all-time records were broken in each case; major cities include Melbourne and Seattle, respectively,
