A study co-authored by Comer Fellow Peter Huybers shows a pattern of ocean temperatures in the Pacific significantly raises the odds of extreme heat in the eastern United States as much as 50 days later.
Peter Huybers, a climate scientist at Harvard University and an author of the study, said that it was not yet clear why there was a connection between temperatures in the North Pacific and heat waves in the East.
One possibility, he said, is that the temperatures on the sea surface lock in undulations in the jet stream that lead to a large mass of high-pressure air settling over the region, allowing it to bake."
Read the full study in Nature Geoscience.