Extreme heat contributes to wildfire conditions, exacerbates drought, and endangers health. Climate change is making heat waves more intense, more frequent, longer lasting, and more dangerous resulting in record breaking extremes.
2023 ranked as the hottest year on record until 2024 which officially surpassed it due to the lingering effects of a powerful El Nino combined with long-term human-caused warming. 2025 finished as third warmest globally since 1850and upper ocean heat content was record high.This according to NOAA. The three-year window from 2023 to 2025 marked the first time a multi-year period averaged more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Currently, The Arctic is cooking. Temperatures this week have routinely passed 90 degrees F (32.2 degrees C) adding to the mountain of broken heat records this summer has racked up so far. The region is warming as much as four times faster than the rest of the world. Not that the planet needs any help with record-setting temperatures. In the U.S. in recent weeks, New York City’s Central Park reached 100 degrees F (37.8 degrees C) for the first time since 2012, parts of Montana soared to 111 degrees F (43.9 degrees C), and areas in Idaho, Utah and Wyoming surpassed 100 degrees F (37.8 degrees C).
Joint research from NASA and NOAA shows that the amount of heat the planet traps has roughly doubled since 2005.
Climate scientists have been attributing storms, droughts and heatwaves to global warming for two decades. Now, they are tracing the chain of responsibility all the way back to the producers of fossil fuels. A study published today in Nature shows that around one-quarter of the heatwaves recorded over 2000–23 can be directly linked to greenhouse-gas emissions from individual energy giants.
Increases in emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane due to human activity trap heat in the atmosphere, capturing outgoing radiation that would otherwise escape into space. The warming drives other changes, such as snow and ice melt, and increased water vapor and cloud changes that can further enhance the warming.
Oceans absorb most of that heat, about 90%. The remaining 10% of trapped heat is divided among melting ice sheets and glaciers, warming the land masses, and heating up the lower atmosphere.
That extra heat, especially in the oceans, will mean more intense hurricanes and marine heat waves. Rising water temperatures spark extensive marine heatwaves, killing off delicate coral reef networks and forcing entire fish populations to migrate northward toward cooler waters
The sea surface temperature anomaly for the equatorial zone El Niño 3.4 again continues setting new records for this time of the year, over 0.8 °C warmer than any other July, with projections that continue rising. Scientists say that there is a real possibility, perhaps 40%, that El Niño will push global temperature averages above 2 °C by early 2027—even as the 2015 Paris Agreement agreed to try to limit warming to 1.5 °C over a 20-year period which has not yet been reached. 11 years later, the expected year where the 1.5 °C average will be hit is in 2029, 13 years earlier than predicted. When the Paris Agreement was made, atmospheric CO2 ppm was at 400 ppm; today it is 432 ppm. And overall temperatures of the top two meters of ocean water are over 1.25 °C warmer than the 1940s.
As temperatures rise, so do the number of heat-related illnesses, emergency room visits, and deaths. Heat waves have been the top cause of U.S. weather fatalities, on average, over the past 30 years.
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 2018 piece from New York Times Climate piece.
CREDIT: Propublica
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