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A12 SCIENCE
Friday 28 July 2023

Sick of hearing about record heat?

Scientists say those numbers paint the

story of a warming world

By SETH BORENSTEIN
AP Science Writer
The summer of 2023 is be-
having like a broken record
about broken records.
Nearly every major cli-
mate-tracking organiza-
tion proclaimed June the
hottest June ever. Then July
4 became the globe’s hot-
test day, albeit unofficially,
according to the University
of Maine’s Climate Reana-
lyzer. It was quickly over-
taken by July 5 and July
6. Next came the hottest A woman poses by a thermometer, Sunday, July 16, 2023, in
week, a tad more official, Death Valley National Park, Calif.
stamped into the books Associated Press
by the World Meteorologi-
cal Organization and the ly 5,000 heat and rainfall So the hottest global June
Japanese Meteorological records have been bro- is “extremely unlikely” to
Agency. ken or tied in the U.S. and happen without climate
With a summer of extreme more than 10,000 records change, as opposed to
weather records domi- set globally, according to one city’s daily record, Tex-
nating the news, meteo- NOAA. Texas cities and as state climatologist John
rologists and scientists say towns alone have set 369 Nielsen-Gammon said.
records like these give a daily high temperature re- Still, some local specifics
glimpse of the big picture: cords since June 1. are striking: Death Valley
a warming planet caused Since 2000, the U.S. has set has flirted this summer with
by climate change. It’s a about twice as many re- the hottest temperature
picture that comes in the cords for heat as those for in modern history, though
vibrant reds and purples cold. “Records go back to that 134 degree Fahren-
representing heat on daily the late 19th century and heit (56.7 Celsius ) record is
weather maps online, in we can see that there has in dispute.
newspapers and on tele- been a decade-on-de- Phoenix grabbed head-
vision. Beyond the maps cade increase in tempera- lines among major U.S.
and the numbers are real tures,” said Gavin Schmidt, cities on Tuesday when it
harms that kill. More than director of NASA’s God- marked a 19th consecu-
100 people have died in dard Institute for Space tive day of unrelenting
heat waves in the United Studies, keeper of the mega heat: 110 degrees
States and India so far this agency’s climate records. Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius) or
summer. “What’s happening now more. It kept going, reach-
Records are crucial for is certainly increasing the ing a 22nd straight day on
people designing infra- chances that 2023 will be Friday. The daytime heat
structure and working the warmest year on re- was accompanied by a
in agriculture because cord. My calculations sug- record stretch of nights
they need to plan for the gest that there’s, right now, that never fell below 90
worst scenarios, said Rus- a 50-50 chance.” Fahrenheit (32.2 Celsius).
sell Vose, climate analysis The larger the geograph- “Everybody’s drawn to ex-
group director for the Na- ic area and the longer tremes,” Vose said. “It’s like
tional Oceanic and Atmo- stretch of time during the Guinness Book of World
spheric Administration. He which records are set, the Records. Human nature is
also chairs a committee on more likely the conditions just drawn to the extreme
national records. represent climate change things out of curiosity.”
In the past 30 days, near- rather than daily weather. But the numbers can be
flawed in what they por-
tray. The scientific commu-
nity “doesn’t really have
the vocabulary to commu-
nicate what it feels like,”
said Stanford University cli-
mate scientist Chris Field,
who co-chaired a ground-
breaking United Nations re-
port in 2012 warning of the
dangers of extreme weath-
er from climate change.q