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It's hot. Fossil fuels made it hotter.
And it'll still be the coldest summer of your life if Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" passes this week.
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It’s 20.6°F hotter than normal today in Concord, New Hampshire. Nearby, in Montpelier, Vermont, it’s 19.1°F hotter than normal.
Further south, in New York City, it’s 13.6°F hotter than normal. Over in Philly—where I live, pray for me—it’s 13.8°F hotter than normal. It’s 14.2°F hotter than normal in Detroit; 10.9°F hotter than normal in Chicago; and 9.6°F hotter than normal in Washington, D.C.
All of these extreme temperatures were made more likely by climate change—a phenomenon primarily caused by fossil fuels—according to Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index (CSI). The CSI uses peer-reviewed methodology to map out how much climate change influences the temperature on a particular day.
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Across nearly the entireties of Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C., climate change made this week’s extreme heat five times more likely.
In Atlanta, Nashville, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Louisville, Orlando, and many other major American cities, climate change made this week’s extreme heat four times more likely.
I’m focusing on the United States because that’s where the majority of our readers are (63 percent, to be exact). But temperatures are higher than average across the entire globe this week.
Western Europe in particular is experiencing temperatures up to 28.6°F hotter than normal. That heat was also made up to five times more likely by climate change.
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I’m probably not telling most readers anything they don’t already know. When heat-trapping gases are accumulated in the atmosphere, it results in more extreme heat. Duh.
But I’m saying it anyway, because these are the moments when it’s most impactful to communicate the reality of climate change—in the moments when people are personally experiencing it.
I’m willing to bet that loads of Americans who are theoretically in support of climate action have disengaged on the issue lately due to sheer overwhelm, which is exactly what the Trump administration has always intended to accomplish by “flooding the zone” with controversy.
So it is exactly now, as millions of Americans are suffering under the very real, very dangerous, and very scientifically-well-documented effects of climate change, that it matters most to remind folks about it.