SACRAMENTO, Calif. — In a somewhat ironic twist of fate, on the final day of the session and on the first day of a major heatwave, the California legislature passed AB 2238, which will establish a heatwave ranking system.
The idea behind this bill – introduced by assembly members Luz Rivas, Cristina Garcia, and Eduardo Garcia – is to create a system by which the California EPA will categorize or otherwise rank incoming heatwaves. Think of it like the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale.
“The reason that we have the Saffir-Simpson scale for tropical cyclones and we have a new atmospheric river classification scale as well that was introduced a few years back is in part to classify these extreme weather features, in terms of their potential impacts, as well as potential benefits," said UC Davis professor Dr. Paul Ullrich, who specializes in regional climate modeling.
“In addition to this, these naming schemes also have the advantage of basically embedding these historic storms in our memory, so that we can look back on some of the most extreme examples of these storms and use those as a foundation for our understanding of how those storms may be different into the future, or what we've already been impacted with and what kind of infrastructural or socio-economic damage we can anticipate associated with storms of a particular category," he said.
The California EPA will work with the State Department of Public Health and other state and local agencies to develop and implement the heatwave ranking system. The system is required to be completed by Jan. 1, 2025.
