Soaring temperatures across the globe show how human-caused global warming has made catastrophic temperatures commonplace.
By Sarah Kaplan and Scott Dance, The Washington Post
Dozens of bodies were discovered in Delhi during a two-day stretch this week when even sundown brought no relief from sweltering heat and humidity. Tourists died or went missing as the mercury surged in Greece. Hundreds of pilgrims perished before they could reach Islam’s holiest site, struck down by temperatures as high as 125 degrees.
The scorching heat across five continents in recent days, scientists say, provided yet more proof that human-caused global warming has so raised the baseline of normal temperatures that once-unthinkable catastrophes have become commonplace.
The suffering came despite predictions that a year-long surge of global heat might soon begin to wane. Instead, in the past seven days alone, billions felt heat with climate change-fueled intensity that broke more than 1,000 temperature records around the globe. Hundreds fell in the United States, where tens of millions of people across the Midwest and Eastern Seaboard have been sweltering amid one of the worst early-season heat waves in memory.
“It should be obvious that dangerous climate change is already upon us,” said Michael Wehner, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “People will die because of global warming on this very day.”
That much of this week’s heat unfolded after the dissipation of the El Niño weather pattern — which typically boosts global temperatures — shows how greenhouse gas pollution has pushed the planet into frightening new territory, researchers say. Scientists had expected this summer might be somewhat cooler than 2023, which was the hottest in the Northern Hemisphere in at least 2,000 years.
But with summer 2024 just getting started, there are ominous signs that even more scorching conditions may still be on the horizon.
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