22 July 2022

This week has been and will be unusually hot around the world. On Tuesday in Britain, where there is virtually no air conditioning, the high temperature was a record-breaking 40.3 degrees Celsius, 104.5 degrees F! It was as hot as Phoenix, Arizona without the respite of air conditioning and community cooling centers.

Back in the 1970s and 1990s climate change was slow to ramp up so we fooled ourselves by saying (1) Nothing’s changed yet so it’s not going to change, and (2) Climate change will be manageable because it won’t happen fast.

Wrong on both counts. This animation from NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies shows world temperature anomalies in Fahrenheit, 1880 – 2021. The fastest changes have occurred in the last 5-10 years!

So hot! And getting hotter.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons, animation from NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies)