Before you do anything else, you might want to look at an amazing chart that shows you 2,000 years of Earth’s climate…

Heat

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 intensemore 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.

One in two people globally faced all-time record-breaking heat in the past 10 years.

That is the startling finding of a new interactive analysis by Carbon Brief’s Dr Zeke Hausfather and Tom Prater, which lays bare the impact of the 1.2C of global warming Earth has already experienced.

In 2022 alone – which was the fifth or sixth warmest year on record for the Earth’s surface – approximately 380 million people saw their hottest single hourly temperature ever recorded, according to the analysis.

CURRENT NEWS

Excessive Heat and Rainfall Combos Will Be Practically Everywhere If Emissions Keep Rising, Study Says

By Angely Mercado 09/15/23
The climate crisis is going to expose more of the world to both hotter weather and heavy rainfall. This could create dangerous flood conditions new research has found. A study recently published in Earth’s Future…
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What this month’s deadly floods tell us about our global climate future

By Scott Dance, Marina Dias and Theodora Yu 09/14/23
When heavy rain hit southern Brazil last week, Moisés Alexandre Heck de Carvalho braced for shin-deep floodwaters, like the country saw a 2020 deluge. Instead, the waters rose so high that the 43-year-old grabbed his…
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Hot, hotter, hottest: NOAA, NASA say Earth endured the most sizzling summer on record in 2023

By Doyle Rice 09/14/23
The Earth sweltered to its hottest June-August on record this year, federal scientists from both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday. It was the warmest summer in the Northern Hemisphere and…
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Hot Summer Days Linked to Climate Change in U.S. Cities

09/13/23
Summer 2023 was the planet’s hottest on record. New Climate Central analysis shows which U.S. cities, states, and regions felt the strongest influence of climate change on summer heat. In the U.S., 326 million people—97%…
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Summer 2023 broke dozens of all-time monthly heat records

By Bob Henson 09/11/23
Dozens of places from Arizona to Florida had their hottest months on record during one of the most scorching stretches in U.S. history, a disaster cataloged in the national climate summary for summer 2023 released…
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As School Started in the US, So Did the School Closures for Heat

By Eric Roston 09/09/23
Susan Eckert teaches advanced placement biology at Montclair High School in Montclair, New Jersey. Her room sits on the second floor, right next to the lower level's heat-absorbing black tar roof. On hot days, Eckert…
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Voters want stronger heat standards

By Hayley Smith 09/08/23
As California endures the increasing likelihood of record heat waves driven by climate change, voters are questioning government’s response to sweltering conditions and say they would welcome stronger policies to help minimize heat’s impact.
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Earth had hottest three-month period on record, with unprecedented sea surface temperatures and much extreme weather

09/06/23
Earth just had its hottest three months on record, according to the European Union-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) implemented by ECMWF. Global sea surface temperatures are at unprecedented highs for the third consecutive month…
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America Could Be in for a Rough Fall

By Lois Parshley 09/06/23
On Labor Day, you could drive from Minnesota’s border with Canada all the way to where Louisiana hits the Gulf of Mexico and not encounter a high under 90 degrees. The heat hasn’t broken: Today,…
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Summer of record heat deals costly damage to Texas water systems

By Dylan Baddour 09/06/23
The hottest summer on record for many Texas cities has brought millions of dollars in damage to municipal plumbing and the loss of huge volumes of water during a severe drought.
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Pakistan bears the brunt of global extreme heat illness and mortality

By Annie Gowen, Niko Kommenda and Saiyna Bashir 09/05/23
Climate-fueled disease — tied to heat, pathogens and toxins — is an emerging, lethal threat that countries are ill-prepared to confront. The Post visited ground zero for this new era, Pakistan, to see what the…
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World likely has hottest summer on record

By Andrew Freedman 09/05/23
The first of many batches of temperature data is in for August — and not only did the globe have its hottest such month on record, but temperature anomalies secured meteorological summer's place in the…
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KEY RESOURCES

U.S. saw its 9th-warmest August on record

09/11/23
A warm August wrapped up a sweltering Summer 2023 across the U.S., according to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

The Heat Tracker

07/17/23
Extreme heat is the deadliest weather phenomenon in the United States. It's also one of the easiest to underestimate: We feel it on our skin, or perhaps see it shimmering in the air around us,…

The Climate Dice are Loaded. Now, a New Frontier?

07/13/23
Andy Revkin recently asked whether the “climate dice” have become more “loaded” in the last 15 years. Climate dice were defined1 in 1988, after we realized that the next cool summer may cause the public…

Earth is at its hottest in thousands of years. Here’s how we know.

07/08/23
Observations from both satellites and the Earth’s surface are indisputable — the planet has warmed rapidly over the past 44 years. As far back as 1850, data from weather stations all over the globe make…

How to Stay Cool and Safe in a Heat Wave

06/30/23
Extreme heat is becoming increasingly common across the globe, with longer, more frequent heat waves. These rising temperatures can put many at risk for heat-related illnesses, including heat stroke and heat exhaustion. Read on for…

Maps show where extreme heat shattered 7,000 records this summer

09/13/22
It was the summer that wouldn’t quit. From early June to straight past Labor Day, waves upon waves of heat scorched and baked the country, smashing thousands of temperature records along the way.

An “Extreme Heat Belt” will soon emerge in the U.S., study warns

08/15/22
A new study reveals the emergence of an "extreme heat belt" from Texas to Illinois, where the heat index could reach 125°F at least one day a year by 2053.

More dangerous heat waves are on the way: See the impact by Zip code.

08/15/22
It was the middle of July and already this summer had become a top contender for the hottest in Texas’s recorded history. In San Antonio, which by July would normally experience about three days of…

NOAA and communities to map heat inequities in 14 U.S. cities and counties

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…

It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

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…

The Climate Crisis

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…

Assessing the U.S. Climate in June 2021

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…

Watching the Land Temperature Bell Curve Heat Up (1950-2020)

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.

Global risk of deadly heat

10/01/20
Climate change can increase the risk of conditions that exceed human thermoregulatory capacity.

Global death rate from rising temperatures projected to surpass the current death rate of all infectious diseases combined

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?…

Newly released satellite data reveals the patterns of record warmth in 2019

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…

2,000 years of Earth’s climate in one simple chart – and the copycat that isn’t what it seems

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…

Climate Impact Map

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.

Extreme climate change has arrived in America

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…

Heat Safety Tips and Resources

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.

MORE NEWS

More Than 111 Million People in the U.S. Face Extreme Heat

By Chris Cameron   08/26/23  
More than 57 million people in the American South and Southwest were under an excessive heat warning on Saturday afternoon — the most severe category for heat conditions — as temperatures across the Gulf Coast…
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Simultaneous record heat hits multiple continents

By Andrew Freedman   08/25/23  
A simultaneous spate of extreme heat events have broken longstanding, all-time records on multiple continents this week. Why it matters: Extreme heat events are the clearest manifestation of climate change in weather that people and…
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As Chicago broils, neighbors find ways to keep each other cool

By Siri Chilukuri   08/24/23  
A massive heat dome covered the central part of the United States on Thursday, stretching from Omaha, Nebraska, down to New Orleans, putting 143 million people in 19 states under heat alerts.
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Risk of heat-related deaths has ‘increased rapidly’ over past 20 years

By Ayesha Tandon   08/24/23  
Spikes in temperature-related deaths during extreme summer heatwaves “will eventually become commonplace” if societies do not adapt to the dangerous impacts of extreme heat, new research finds. The paper, published in Nature Communications, assesses the…
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ERCOT may start rolling blackouts in Texas. Here’s how to prepare.

By Elizabeth Sander   08/24/23  
The extreme heat facing Texas is straining the power grid and ERCOT might need to initiate emergency conditions that could result in rolling blackouts across the state.
Read more

What Happens When the Heat Repeats?

By Kylie Mohr   08/24/23  
For two years now, scientists, shellfish managers, and tribes have been working to understand how the heat dome that settled over the Pacific Northwest in the summer of 2021 affected the places where the ocean…
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Expanding heat wave engulfing much of Texas threatens Central U.S.

By Rebecca Falconer   08/18/23  
A "dangerous," intensifying heat wave was forecast to bring numerous daily high record temperatures in the Central and Southeast U.S. from Friday and expand to much of the Lower 48 states by next week.
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Average Gulf Coast temperatures reach record highs

By Zack Budryk   08/16/23  
The Gulf of Mexico reached record heat in the first half of August, setting the stage for an intense hurricane season in a region that is no stranger to devastating storms.
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Volcanic eruption may be boosting global heat wave

By Andrew Freedman   08/14/23  
A climate science debate is simmering over how much of 2023's record warmth is due to human-caused factors, chiefly the burning of fossil fuels, and the role of other influences.
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July 2023 Temperature Update

By Robert Rohde   08/14/23  
Globally, July 2023 was the warmest July — and the warmest month of any kind — since records began in 1850. The previous record for warmest month was broken by a large margin. Both land…
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August 2023 El Niño update: back to school

By Emily Becker   08/10/23  
It’s that time again! And by “that time,” I mean the El Niño forecast update, of course. The chance that El Niño—the warm phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (aka “ENSO”) climate pattern—will continue…
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Texas Power Prices to Surge 800% on Sunday Amid Searing Heat

By Naureen S Malik   08/08/23  
Texas power prices for Sunday surged more than 800% as searing heat pushes demand toward record levels and strains supplies on the state grid.
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Hottest July on Record Kills Hundreds of Cows

By Angely Mercado   08/08/23  
Alarming heat and humidity killed hundreds of cows in Iowa last month. These losses have further decreased the size of the overall U.S. cattle herd, which has shrunk to a more than 50-year low. The…
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This Scorching Summer Is Taking a Toll on Your Favorite Foods

By Maryn McKenna   08/04/23  
ON THE MAP of the US Drought Monitor, a joint project of federal agencies and the University of Nebraska, colored warnings cover the landscape. It’s abnormally dry in Michigan. Minnesota is in moderate drought. A…
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Boiling Point: For better and for worse

By Sammy Roth   08/03/23  
With scorching heat prompting Americans to crank up their air conditioners, power companies have responded by cranking up their gas plants. That’s according to the Washington Post’s Timothy Puko, who cites data showing that the…
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What This Year’s ‘Astonishing’ Ocean Heat Means for the Planet

By Elena Shao   08/03/23  
Brutal heat waves have baked the world this summer and they haven’t been contained to land. Earth’s oceans are the hottest they have been in modern history, by an unusually wide margin. The planet’s average…
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Climate change made July hotter for almost every human on Earth

By Seth Borenstein   08/02/23  
Human-caused global warming made July hotter for four out of five people on Earth, with more than 2 billion people feeling climate change-boosted warmth daily, according to a flash study.
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These places baked the most during Earth’s hottest month on record

By Ian Livingston   08/02/23  
July 2023 will go down as the hottest month on record across the globe, and perhaps the hottest in at least 120,000 years, according to climate scientists. During this sweltering month for the planet, countless…
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Miami is Used to Heat, but Not Like This

By Amy Green   08/01/23  
Heat is a familiar fact of life here. The local NBA team is named for it. The tropical nature of it sets the region apart from the rest of the continental U.S. But that heat…
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Extreme heat is affecting oil refineries in Texas, pushing up gas prices

By Spectrum News   08/01/23  
Multiple days of temperatures exceeding 100 degrees in the Southern states are affecting oil refineries in Texas and Louisiana, diminishing gas supplies and increasing prices.
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‘Silent killer’: experts warn of record US deaths from extreme heat

By Oliver Milman   08/01/23  
The punishing heatwaves that have scorched much of the US could result in a record number of heat-related deaths this year, experts have warned, amid a spike in hospitalizations from collapsing workers. Among those needing…
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4 factors driving 2023’s extreme heat and climate disasters

By Michael Wysession   07/31/23  
Between the record-breaking global heat and extreme downpours, it’s hard to ignore that something unusual is going on with the weather in 2023.
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‘Vicious cycle’: Heat waves ramp up global burning of fossil fuels

By Timothy Puko   07/28/23  
The United States is setting records for natural gas consumption this week at the power plants that keep the nation’s air conditioners humming, according to estimates from S&P Global Commodity Insights. In China, power plants…
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This Looks Like Earth’s Warmest Month. Hotter Ones Appear to Be in Store.

By Raymond Zhong   07/27/23  
Weeks of scorching summer heat in North America, Europe, Asia and elsewhere are putting July on track to be Earth’s warmest month on record, the European Union climate monitor said on Thursday, the latest milestone…
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Spared the Worst of Summer Until Now, the Northeast Joins a Nation Scorched

By Jenna Russell, Erin Nolan and Judson Jones   07/27/23  
New York City’s power company asked customers to cut back on electricity use Thursday afternoon, and Philadelphia declared a health emergency as the dangerous heat that has scorched other parts of the country for more…
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‘Era of global boiling has arrived,’ says UN chief as July set to be hottest month on record

By Ajit Niranjan   07/27/23  
The era of global warming has ended and “the era of global boiling has arrived”, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said after scientists confirmed July was on track to be the world’s hottest…
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Scientists declare July world’s hottest month and warn future will be worse

By Andrew Freedman   07/27/23  
Scorching heat waves on three continents, unprecedented ocean temperatures along with global average temperature records are prompting scientists to predict July will clinch the title of Earth's hottest month. Why it matters: Five days short…
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‘Heat health emergency’: Nearly half the US at risk as dangerous heat expands and intensifies in the Northeast

By Aya Elamroussi and Eric Zerkel   07/27/23  
Heat is intensifying for millions of people in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic Thursday, creating a “heat health emergency” as nearly half of the country bakes in dangerously high temperatures. Around 150 million people from coast…
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101°F in the Ocean Off Florida: Was It a World Record?

By Hiroko Tabuchi   07/26/23  
The reading from a buoy off Florida this week was stunning: 101.1 degrees Fahrenheit, or just over 38 Celsius, a possible world record for sea surface temperatures and a stark indication of the brutal marine…
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Deadly global heatwaves undeniably result of climate crisis, scientists show

By Damian Carrington   07/25/23  
The human-caused climate crisis is undeniably to blame for the deadly heatwaves that have struck Europe and the US in recent weeks, scientists have shown.
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The world needs a new way to talk about heat

By Michael J. Coren   07/25/23  
Earlier this summer, officials from the U.N. weather agency admitted they’re still figuring out how to tell 8 billion people around the world what constitutes deadly heat.
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Heat waves in U.S., Europe ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change, study finds

By Brady Dennis   07/25/23  
The analysis by the World Weather Attribution network, a coalition of scientists that conducts rapid analyses to determine how the warming atmosphere influences extreme weather events, examined weather data and computer model...
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Report: Record heat “virtually impossible” without climate change

By Andrew Freedman   07/25/23  
Record-breaking, deadly heat in the U.S. and Europe would have been "virtually impossible" in a world without human-driven climate change, according to new data published early Tuesday. Why it matters: The findings show society is…
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It’s so hot in Arizona, doctors are treating a spike of patients who were burned by falling on the ground

By Jen Christensen   07/24/23  
It is so hot in Maricopa County, Arizona, that people are being brought into the emergency room with significant, sometimes life-threatening burns. For the past three or four weeks of this record heatwave, people have…
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This week will be the summer’s hottest so far over the Lower 48

By Matthew Cappucci   07/24/23  
After a month of bringing blistering heat to the Southwest, the southern Plains and the Gulf Coast, the relentless “heat dome” that has caused an outbreak of extreme temperatures is about to expand across even…
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Americans Are Moving Toward Climate Danger in Search of Cheaper Homes

By Leslie Kaufman   07/24/23  
A midsummer quiz: Let’s say you read about an area experiencing blistering heat for weeks on end. Heat so hot that in the day, you can’t go outside, and at nighttime it’s still above 90F.…
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Is it really hotter now than any time in 100,000 years?

By Darrell Kaufman   07/21/23  
As scorching heat grips large swaths of the Earth, a lot of people are trying to put the extreme temperatures into context and asking: When was it ever this hot before? Globally, 2023 has seen…
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The 15 hottest days, in the world’s hottest month

By Andrew Freedman   07/20/23  
By the end of the week, it is likely that 15 days just this month will have breached an unprecedented global temperature threshold — a clarion wakeup call in the form of extreme weather.
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Louisiana juveniles are suffering dangerous heat and isolation in an old death row facility built for adults, a lawsuit states. Experts say the harm could be irreversible

By Amy Simonson and Lauren Mascarenhas   07/20/23  
Children in the custody of Louisiana’s Office of Juvenile Justice being held in a former death row building at an adult prison are suffering dangerous heat conditions and routine isolation in their cells that experts…
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Seniors are migrating to states that face America’s most extreme heat

By Joshua Partlow, Greg Morton, Scott Dance and Brianna Sacks   07/19/23  
It was 6:15 p.m., 110 degrees, the speakers were playing “Hot Blooded” by Foreigner and the seniors of suburban Phoenix were blissfully arm-pumping their way around the walking pool.
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116 degrees at night: Death Valley’s extreme heat goes off the charts from climate change

By Hayley Smith   07/19/23  
It was 10 p.m. and 116 degrees as a brutal wind whipped through the darkness. Here in Death Valley National Park — dubbed the hottest place on Earth — intrepid tourists waded into a hotel…
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Hotter Climate, Higher Cooling Demand

07/19/23  
As the planet warms and both scorching days and sweltering nights occur more often, more cooling is needed to keep homes, schools, offices, and hospitals at comfortable temperatures.
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As China Bakes in Record Heat, Kerry Presses Beijing on Climate Change

By Vivian Wang and Lisa Friedman   07/18/23  
In the sandstone desert of China’s far west, a local meteorological station recorded an all-time high temperature of 126 degrees. In central China, heat-induced mechanical problems trapped tourists riding on a cable car in midair.…
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A letter from Earth: I’m giving you record temperatures and wild floods. TAKE A HINT!!

By Rex Huppke   07/18/23  
I know you all are busy driving SUVs on me and filling my oceans with plastics and whatnot, but could you take a quick moment and think: 'Hey, is Earth trying to tell us something?'…
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Death Valley’s scalding temperatures draw visitors: What does 128 degrees feel like?

By Isabelle Butera   07/17/23  
While most of the Southwest was advised to take cover from heat, visitors flocked to Death Valley National Park to experience some of the hottest temperatures ever recorded, according to meteorologists.
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For Florida’s Hurricane Ian survivors, extreme heat is a ‘second disaster’

By Brianna Sacks   07/17/23  
Lying on the floor of her storage unit, wet, with a fan to her face, Kimberly Goulet began to feel anxious and “extremely, desperately sad.” It was from the heat. No matter what she did,…
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What this summer’s weather reveals about climate change

By Andrew Freedman   07/17/23  
Monitoring the planet's climate this summer can give one the impression that the climate system — which includes the oceans, atmosphere, ice sheets and more — has gone off the rails.
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Children lost in flooding as US endures extreme weather, from smoke up north to heat in the West

By Maryclaire Dale   07/17/23  
Pennsylvania authorities drew on 100 people, drones and cadaver dogs Monday in their search for two missing children whose family’s car was swept away in flash flooding that ravaged the East Coast over the weekend.…
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Big oil quietly walks back on climate pledges as global heat records tumble

By Dharna Noor   07/16/23  
It was probably the Earth’s hottest week in history earlier this month, following the warmest June on record, and top scientists agree that the planet will get even hotter unless we phase out fossil fuels.
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Big Heat and Big Oil

By Bill McKibben   07/16/23  
In the list of ill-timed corporate announcements, historians may someday give pride of place to one made by Wael Sawan, the new C.E.O. of Shell, the largest energy company in Europe. In 2021, Shell said…
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