This Heat Wave Is Just a Taste of What’s to Come
The temperatures gripping the US this week were made up to five times more likely by the fact that the atmosphere is simply hotter.
As hot as this summer will be, it’s also one of the coolest we will ever enjoy again.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Weather isn’t climate, and a heat wave isn’t proof of human-induced global warming any more than a snowball disproves it. At the same time, nothing quite focuses the mind on the causes and effects of a hotter planet than Mother Nature covering half of the United States with a giant pot lid, turning up the burner and letting it boil for a while.
Thanks to a massive heat dome squatting on North America for most of the week, nearly 150 million Americans in 28 states were under some level of heat advisory from the National Weather Service as of Monday morning. More than 91 million people from Iowa to New York City face the highest level of alert, “extreme heat,” with heat indexes in the triple digits, through at least Wednesday.