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 Raymond Zhong Photo: Emilio Fraile/Europa Press, via Associated Press
Millions of Americans are once again in the grips of dangerous heat. Hot air blanketed Europe last weekend, causing parts of France and Spain to feel the way it usually does in July or August.…
By Amy Cheng Photo: Christopher Smith , Washington Post
Thousands of cattle in Kansas have died in recent days due to high heat and humidity, dealing a blow to one of the country’s leading cattle production states as the industry grapples with extreme weather…
By Somini Sengupta Photo: Channi Anand , AP
Pandemic, war, and climate change have brought matters to a head. The world faces what the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, this week called “an unprecedented wave of hunger and destitution.”
By Matthew Cappucci Photo: Pivotal Weather
Extreme heat that will challenge records is set to peak Friday and Saturday from the Desert Southwest to California’s Central Valley, before sliding toward the central and eastern United States. Highs could surge 10 to…
By Jennifer A. Kingson Illustration: Natalie Peeples/Axios
There's a growing effort to name and categorize heat waves the way we do hurricanes — to call attention to their significance, alert people to dangerous temperatures and prod public officials into action...
By Evan Halper Photo: David J. Phillip , AP
The nation’s power grid is under stress like never before, with regulators warning that the kind of rolling outages that are now familiar to California and Texas could be far more widespread as hot summer…
By Matthew Cappucci and Jason Samenow
A sprawling dome of summerlike heat has swelled from Texas to Wisconsin and is poised to shatter records in more than a dozen states. Madison, Wis., Chicago, Des Moines, St. Louis, Kansas, Little Rock and…
By Jake Thomas Photo: Brendon Bell , Getty Images
Texas' power grid management agency has extended its warning of possible emergency conditions as residents turn to air-conditioning to cope with above normal temperatures. While temperatures are expected to remain high throughout the state, the…
By Lynne Terry
New rules going into effect in Oregon in June and July are expected to protect tens of thousands of workers from illness and death when temperatures soar past 80 or when the air becomes clogged…
By Greg Graziosi
Heat records in Texas were toppled when temperatures reached as high as 112F (44C), setting off a heatwave that will engulf much of the central US. The record-setting temperatures occurred on Saturday in Texas, but…
By Kasha Patel Photo: Charlie Riedel , AP
Since signing the Paris climate agreement in 2015, nations around the world have focused on one climate goal: limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels this century. But as…
By Kasha Patel Photo: Charlie Riedel , AP
Since signing the Paris climate agreement in 2015, nations around the world have focused on one climate goal: limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels this century. But as…
04/26/22
"Extreme heat kills more Americans than any other weather event and has the greatest impact on our nation's most vulnerable communities," said Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves. "Fortunately, our talented and dedicated researchers and…
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…
08/11/21
We all live in two worlds: a physical one and a social one. The new report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was released on Monday, is ostensibly about the physical world. It…
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 Alexandra Witze Photo: Mario Tama 04/01/22
It was one of the biggest climate change questions of the early 2000s: Had the planet’s rising fever stalled, even as humans pumped more heat-trapping gases into Earth’s atmosphere?
By Donatella Zona Photo: Lisa Hupp 03/30/22
Some theories suggest that this “Arctic greening” will help counteract climate change. The idea is that since plants take up carbon dioxide as they grow, rising temperatures will mean Arctic vegetation will absorb more carbon…
By Joan Meiners Photo: Thomas Hawthorne 03/23/22
Sometimes science becomes too hot to handle. That's what researchers at the University of Arizona found recently when they tried to test a new air pollution monitoring system around Tucson.
By The Associated Press Photo: David Goldman/AP 03/19/22
Earth's poles are undergoing simultaneous freakish extreme heat with parts of Antarctica more than 70 degrees (40 degrees Celsius) warmer than average and areas of the Arctic more than 50 degrees (30 degrees Celsius) warmer…
By Jason Samenow and Kasha Patel Photo: WeatherBell 03/18/22
‘This event is completely unprecedented and upended our expectations about the Antarctic climate system,’ one expert said
By Dinah Voyles Pulver 03/15/22
People are dying from more intense heat waves, hurricanes and flooding. Forests are disappearing because of worsening wildfires, droughts and pest invasions. Rising sea levels are imperiling coastal communities and ecosystems.
By Ashley Harrell Photo: Mark Ralston/AFP / Getty Images 02/16/22
As Northern California’s unseasonably warm weather broke records this weekend, grim news circulated on drought in the Western United States: Thanks to human-caused climate change, we are living through the region’s driest period in 1,200…
By Debra Kahn Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images 02/12/22
Californians are lounging in parks, wearing shorts to the beach and dining al fresco without heat lamps in February — and feeling terrible about it.
By Matthew Cappucci Photo: Sarah Shtylman/Reuters 02/11/22
Talk about weather whiplash. Desiccating drought has become reinforced in California after a brief spell of heavy precipitation in the fall, dashing hopes of a long-term pattern change that would spell wetter weather for a…
By Oliver Milman Photo: Andrew Witherspoon 02/05/22
More than a third of the American population is currently experiencing rapid, above-average rates of temperature increase, with 499 counties already breaching 1.5C (2.7F) of heating, a Guardian review of climate data shows.
By Jason Samenow Photo: Mark Miller/The Washington Post 12/18/21
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 10/18/21
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) 10/13/21
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 10/11/21
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 10/07/21
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 10/07/21
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 10/07/21
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 10/07/21
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 09/09/21
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 09/05/21
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 08/31/21
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 08/24/21
The country, like most of the world, is becoming both drier and wetter in the era of climate change. It depends where you live.
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 Olmos Photo: Tojo Andrianarivo 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 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 Bill McKibben 08/11/21
We all live in two worlds: a physical one and a social one. The new report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was released on Monday, is ostensibly about the physical world. It…
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,…
