HEAT
New research shows that the amount of heat the planet traps has roughly doubled since 2005, contributing to more rapidly warming oceans, air and land. Oceans absorb most of that heat, about 90 percent. That extra heat, especially in the oceans, will mean more intense hurricanes and marine heat waves.
Climate change is making heat waves more intense, more frequent, longer lasting, and more dangerous resulting in record breaking extremes: September 2020 was the world’s hottest month ever recorded, and in June 2021, Portland, Oregon had a day with 108 degrees, which broke all heat records. The summer of 2021 is now the warmest summer on record in the U.S., barely eclipsing the extreme heat of 1936’s Dust Bowl.
Extreme heat contributes to wildfire conditions, exacerbates drought, and endangers health.
NRDC has a heat map that is searchable by address. C2ES’ Resilience Strategies for Extreme Heat provide solutions for adaptation that be implemented on both an individual and community level.
And, if you are curious about how the temperatures in your hometown have risen since you were born and how much hotter they are predicted to become, take a look at this New York Times Climate piece.
By Jason Samenow Photo: Mark Miller/The Washington Post
Rising temperatures have been eating away at the chances for snowfall for Santa in much of the United States, and the forecast is for mild weather again.
By Laura Anaya-Morga Photo: Brian van der Brug
In a year of both extreme heat and extreme drought, California has reported its driest water year in terms of precipitation in a century, and experts fear the coming 12 months could be even worse.…
By Molly Taft Photo: Altaf Qadri (AP)
After a summer of deadly heat, the future of air conditioning in a world marked by rising temperatures has come sharply into focus. While some research has indicated we could “essentially cook ourselves” if the…
By James Ross Gardner Photo: Will Matsuda for The New Yorker
The high winds that make up the polar jet stream encircle the Northern Hemisphere like a loosely draped rope. There are typically four or six curves in the rope, the result of the temperature differences…
Photo: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times
Extreme heat is one of the deadliest consequences of global warming. But in a state that prides itself as a climate leader, California chronically undercounts the death toll and has failed to address the growing…
By Matthew Cappucci and Jason Samenow
For about a week after the fall equinox, much of the eastern two-thirds of the Lower 48 states enjoyed crisp, refreshing autumn weather. But now Mother Nature has changed course. Warm, humid conditions more typical…
By Genaro Molina
It was the hottest August on record in California. For more than three weeks in 2020, back-to-back heat waves settled over the Southwest, claiming dozens of lives and leaving tens of millions of people sweltering…
By Tony Barboza, Anna M. Phillips, Paul Duginski Photo: Genaro Molina
When a major heat wave hits Southern California, it begins with a jab — a ridge of high pressure builds over Nevada or Mexico and sweeps into the region, bringing scorching temperatures along with it.
By Hayley Smith Photo: Luis Sinco Los Angeles Times
California and several other western states this year endured the hottest summer on record, according to federal data released Thursday, underscoring the ways rapid climate change is unleashing unprecedented wildfires, deadly heat waves and drought…
By Sergio Olmos Photo: Jordan Gale
In early summer, a day laborer laying irrigation lines at a plant nursery just south of Portland, Ore., collapsed to the ground and died. His official cause of death was declared “heat related.”
By Ciara Nugent
Rising extreme heat will make it increasingly hard for workers to do their jobs, shaving hundreds of billions of dollars off the U.S. economy each year. That’s according to a report published Tuesday by the…
By Aatish Bhatia and Nadja Popovich Photo: NOAA
The country, like most of the world, is becoming both drier and wetter in the era of climate change. It depends where you live.
08/13/21
“In this case, first place is the worst place to be,” said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, Ph.D. “July is typically the world’s warmest month of the year, but July 2021 outdid itself as the hottest…
08/06/21
The febrile summer of 2021 hammers home what we know and what we don’t about climate change. It can be summed up in two paragraphs, neither of which is comforting. 1. We understand about how much…
07/21/21
The June contiguous U.S. temperature was 72.6°F, 4.2°F above the 20th-century average, ranking warmest in the 127-year record and surpassing the previous record for June set in 2016 by 0.9°F. The year-to-date average temperature for…
06/04/21
This visualization shows that as land temperatures have increased since 1950, hotter days have become more common and colder days have become less common.
10/01/20
Climate change can increase the risk of conditions that exceed human thermoregulatory capacity.
08/03/20
How much is temperature to blame when hospital visits surge during heat waves and cold spells? What role might adaptations like indoor heating and cooling systems play in blunting those effects? And, at what cost?…
01/31/20
Last year was the second-warmest on record for the globe, but in many places, such as Australia and Alaska, temperatures were unprecedented in modern record-keeping. This is known from data gathered by thermometers at the…
01/30/20
What were global temperatures the year Jesus was born, during the 12th century when Genghis Khan ruled the Mongol Empire, and in 1503 when Leonardo da Vinci started painting the Mona Lisa — and how…
11/05/19
The Climate Impact Lab is a unique collaboration of 30 climate scientists, economists, computational experts, researchers, analysts, and students from some of the nation’s leading research institutions.
09/11/19
This website is designed to inform you about the health dangers of heat, prepare you for excessive heat events, and tell you what to do during an excessive heat wave.
08/13/19
Before climate change thawed the winters of New Jersey, this lake hosted boisterous wintertime carnivals. As many as 15,000 skaters took part, and automobile owners would drive onto the thick ice. Thousands watched as local…
By Henry Fountain Photo: Josh Haner , The New York Times 08/20/21
Something extraordinary happened last Saturday at the frigid high point of the Greenland ice sheet, two miles in the sky and more than 500 miles above the Arctic Circle: It rained for the first time.
By Sujata Gupta Photo: Bruce Yuanyue Bi 08/18/21
On a sweltering summer afternoon almost a decade ago, Meenu Tewari was visiting a weaving company in Surat in western India. Tewari, an urban planner, frequently makes such visits to understand how manufacturing companies operate.…
By Kristina Dahl and Rachel Licker 08/17/21
Outdoor workers are encountering a deadly risk more frequently than ever before: intensifying extreme heat. As climate change brings one record-heat decade after another, these workers will increasingly find themselves in an impossible situation—having to…
By Kasha Patel Photo: Salas/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock 08/13/21
If you thought this July was just toasty, you probably didn’t realize you were living through the hottest month in modern history. On Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared July 2021 the world’s…
By Mike Baker and Sergio Almos Photo: Tojo Andrianavarivo , The New York Times 08/13/21
Road crews sprayed water on century-old bridges in Seattle on Thursday to keep the steel from expanding in the sizzling heat. In Portland, Ore., where heat has already killed dozens of people this summer, volunteers…
By Molly Taft Photo: Gillian Flaccus , AP 08/13/21
The Pacific Northwest is enduring searing heat at the end of this week, a little over a month after multiple days of record-breaking temperatures killed hundreds of people in the region.
By Nicola Slawson Photo: Mathieu Lewis- Rolland , Getty Images 08/12/21
Oregon has declared a state of emergency as the Pacific north-west prepares for triple-digit temperatures just weeks after a deadly heatwavestruck the region. People streamed into cooling centers and misting stations on Wednesday evening in…
By Matthew Cappucci and Jason Samenow 08/12/21
Two unforgiving heat waves are roasting opposite corners of the Lower 48, prompting the issuance of heat alerts for more than 150 million people.Excessive-heat warnings or heat advisories stretch nearly 1,500 miles, and some of…
By Jeff Tollefson Photo: David Ryder Getty Images 08/09/21
Modern society’s continued dependence on fossil fuels is warming the world at a pace that is unprecedented in the past 2,000 years—and its effects are already apparent as record droughts, wildfires and floods devastate communities…
By Steven Mufson Photo: Michael Robinson Chavez , The Washington Post 08/02/21
Scientists have long been worried about what many call “the methane bomb” — the potentially catastrophic release of methane from thawing wetlands in Siberia’s permafrost.
By Olivia Rosane Photo: Robert Andrus 08/02/21
This is the case in the high-elevation woodlands of the Colorado Rockies, where warmer and drier conditions encourage bark-beetle outbreaks and more extreme wildfires. However, a new study published in the Journal of Ecology this…
By Ruby Mellen and William Neff 07/28/21
When it comes to heat, the human body is remarkably resilient — it’s the humidity that makes it harder to cool down. And humidity, driven in part by climate change, is increasing. A measurement of…
By Daisy Dunne 07/27/21
“Record-shattering” events similar to North America’s recent deadly heatwave could become far more likely in the coming years if little is done to tackle rapidly rising greenhouse gas emissions, a new study says. During an…
By Ayesha Tandon Photo: ZUMA Press Inc 07/26/21
“Record-shattering” extremes – which break weather records by large margins – will become more likely as a result of climate change, a new study finds. The paper, published in Nature Climate Change, finds that the…
By Andrew Freedman Photo: NASA Earth Observatory 07/26/21
The recent deadly heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, during which all-time temperature records were shattered by several degrees, is a prologue to what is coming across much of the U.S., Europe and Asia, a…
By Henry Fountain Photo: Maranie Staab/Reuters 07/26/21
The ferocious heat wave that hit the Pacific Northwest in late June stunned some climate scientists because it was so much more extreme than anything the region had experienced before. In most heat waves, if…
By Damian Carrington Photo: US Forest Service/AFP/Getty Images 07/26/21
“Record-shattering” heatwaves, even worse than the one that recently hit north-west America, are set to become much more likely in future, according to research. The study is a stark new warning on the rapidly escalating…
By Caroline Anders Photo: John Locher/AP 07/24/21
A measurement long known to climate scientists has begun creeping into the public consciousness as extreme weather conditions force us to reflect on what conditions humans can withstand. In a summer of record-breaking heat in…
By David Leonhardt Photo: Lido Vizzutti 07/22/21
It’s almost as if the entire East Coast has shifted south. Summers in Portland, Maine, are now almost as hot as summers in Boston were for much of the 20th century. Summers in Boston have…
07/22/21
It’s not just climate change, it’s the design choices we’ve made that are turning cities into inhospitable communities. From New York City to Paris, Bloomberg Associates’ Adam Freed shares how cities are preparing for higher…
By Marc Fisher and Carissa Wolf Photo: Colin Mulvany/The Spokesman-Review/AP 07/22/21
In Boise, Idaho, where the temperature topped 97 for a stretch of 14 out of 15 days this month, Sarah O’Keefe refuses to give in. With the mercury repeatedly soaring into triple digits, she started waking…
By Terrence Doyle Photo: Alyssa Gehman 07/21/21
Tens of thousands of dead mussels lay along the coastline in Vancouver, British Columbia, boiled alive by the extreme heat wave that swept across the Pacific Northwest late last month. The Canadian city’s beaches transformed into mass…
By Susan Joy Hassol and Kristie Ebi 07/21/21
Yes, it is getting hotter. And while you might be able to escape the intensifying tropical storms, flooding or droughts by moving elsewhere, refuge from extreme heat is no longer easy to find. Even in…
By Eli Rosenberg and Abha Bhattarai Photo: Max Whittaker 07/19/21
Surging temperatures across the West Coast this summer are exposing another way that the changing climate threatens the country’s future: the danger it poses to workers, particularly those who work outside and in warehouses. The…
By Matthew Cappucci Photo: David Ryder/Reuters 07/19/21
For the fourth time in the past month and a half, a strong heat wave is roasting parts of the western U.S., as wildfires run amok. High-temperature records could fall in parts of the northern…
By Hayley Dunning 07/19/21
A new approach to analyse satellite measurements of Earth’s cloud cover reveals that clouds are very likely to enhance global heating. The research, by scientists at Imperial College London and the University of East Anglia,…
By Richard Read Photo: Richard Read / Los Angeles Times 07/18/21
EAGLE, Idaho — The fish shimmied past her underwater office window inside the Lower Granite Dam, solo and in small groups, an endless parade of Chinook salmon, steelhead and shad. Debby Stallcop observed and counted,…
By Joshua Partlow Photo: Mason Trinca 07/17/21
Youth pastor Matt Wolff and his wife, Jennifer, followed God’s direction when they settled at the end of a rutted dirt track in the pine forests above this southern Oregon town. And they have prayed…
By Eleanor Cummins Photo: Bgsmith/shutterstock 07/16/21
Climate has always been one of Lake Tahoe’s biggest selling points. Nevada is infamously inhospitable to everyone but Elvis impersonators, and California is always burning. But North America’s largest alpine lake, which straddles the line…
By Matthew Cappucci Photo: WeatherBell 07/15/21
The heat wave is forecast to bring triple-digit temperatures to at least 16 million people, challenging and breaking records into Canada. It’s also targeting an area where numerous wildfires have flared up and a smoky…
By Kate Nakamura Photo: John Froschauer/AP Kate Nakamura 07/15/21
This past June was the hottest June in the recorded history of the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Rising temperatures have been felt all around the world with countries in Europe,…
By Astead W. Herndon Photo: Pete Caster 07/14/21
Record-breaking climate extremes, from heat to drought to wildfires, are blanketing the United States this summer. This is how one region has been struck. Places that are usually cool and often rainy, such as Oregon…
By Sami Grover Photo: Chuchart Duangdaw/Getty Images 07/13/21
The recent heatwaves in Canada and the Pacific Northwest caused many seasoned climate watchers—including normally cautious climatologists—to essentially freak out. And with good reason. When heat records normally fall, they fall by fractions of degrees, with each…
By Catrin Einhorn Photo: Christopher Harley 07/12/21
An early estimate points to a huge die-off along the Pacific Coast, and scientists say rivers farther inland are warming to levels that could be lethal for some kinds of salmon.
By the Associated Press 07/12/21
Firefighters struggle to contain northern California fire amid warning of potential for ‘extreme growth’ of Oregon blaze.
By Roselle Chen 07/12/21
In a failed attempt to escape a record-breaking heat wave in late June in Pendleton, Oregon, more than 100 baby birds bailed from their nests. The downy babies, mostly Swainson and Cooper’s hawks, fell up…
By Jason Samenow Photo: Melina Mara 07/12/21
The astonishingly hot temperatures occurred amid a punishing heat wave in the West, focused between interior Oregon, Central Valley in California and southern Nevada. Intensified by human-caused climate change, the heat wave is fueling fast-moving…
By Sammy Westfall and Amanda Coletta Photo: Alyssa Gehman 07/08/21
Amid the crushing summer heat wave that has slammed the Pacific Northwest and parts of Canada, Alyssa Gehman, a marine ecologist who lives by the sea in Vancouver, B.C., walked down to the shore to…
By Matt McGrath Photo: Reuters 07/08/21
Climate researchers have grown used to heatwaves breaking records all over the world in recent years. However, beating the previous national high temperature mark by more than 4C in one go, as happened in Canada…
By Dharna Noor Photo: Nathan Howard (AP) 07/08/21
The Pacific Northwest is still reeling from the mind boggling heat wave that gripped it late last month. The past two days have made it clear that hundreds died in the region, and that the climate crisis played…
By Sean Kelly Photo: Ander Gillenea , Getty Images 07/07/21
Just a few weeks ago temperatures soared to unprecedented lengths in the Pacific Northwest. Portland, Oregon reached 116 degrees. Their hottest record of all time; shattering Austin’s current standing all-time record of 112 degrees.
By Henry Fountain Photo: Getty Images 07/07/21
A rapid analysis of last week’s record-breaking heat found that it would have been virtually impossible without the influence of human-caused climate change. The extraordinary heat wave that scorched the Pacific Northwest last week would…
By John Schwartz Photo: Ali Lapetina 07/06/21
Jill Laidlaw has worked for 37 years at Camp Cavell in Lexington, Mich., a little spot of paradise on Lake Huron. But she has seen trouble in paradise: climate change. Temperatures in Michigan have risen…
By Rory Sullivan 07/03/21
A town in British Columbia which experienced record-high temperatures earlier this week has been largely destroyed by wildfire, with at least two deaths reported. Lytton endured highs of 49.6 C on Tuesday, the day before…
By Amanda Kooser 07/02/21
A historic heat wave descended on the Pacific Northwest in the US and western Canada at the end of June, sending temperatures soaring from Portland to Vancouver -- cities typically known for temperate conditions. The European…
Photo: Nathan Howard/AP 07/02/21
Many of the dead were found alone, in homes without air conditioning or fans. Some were elderly — one as old as 97. The body of an immigrant farm laborer was found in an Oregon…
By Jane Dalton Photo: AFP/ Getty Images 07/02/21
The record-breaking heatwave in the US northwest and Canada is causing what’s thought to be the biggest glacier melt in Washington state in a century. Milky, sandy water has been reported running into Puget Sound,…
By Sergio Olmos, Winston Choi-Schagrin, and Shawn Hubler Photo: Alisha Jucevic 07/01/21
The heat wave in parts of the Pacific Northwest played a role in the deaths of dozens of people, some of whom lived alone.
By Megan McCluskey Photo: Emily Krouse 07/01/21
The unprecedented heat wave that descended on the Pacific Northwest this week has alarmed many in the region’s burgeoning wine industry, leaving them worried over the deepening challenges climate change could bring to their businesses.
By Yana Pashaeva Photo: Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty Images 07/01/21
Air conditioners have become a treasure in Washington and Oregon amid an unprecedented heat wave in the Pacific Northwest. Portland and Seattle hit records of 116 and 108 degrees on Monday. More than 35 cities…
