At about summer’s halfway point, the record-breaking heat and weather extremes are both unprecedented and unsurprising, hellish yet boring in some ways, scientists say.
Killer heat. Deadly floods. Smoke from wildfires that chokes.
And there’s no relief in sight.
Expect a hotter than normal August and September, American and European forecast centers predict.
“We are seeing unprecedented changes all over the world,” said NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt. “The heat waves that we’re seeing in the U.S. and in Europe, in China are demolishing records left, right and center. This is not a surprise.”
Here’s a rundown of the summer of Earth’s discontent.
RECORD-SHATTERING HEAT: Globally, June this year was the hottest June on record — and scientists say July has been so hot that even before the month was over they could say it was the hottest month on record. But it’s individual places where people live that the heat has stuck around and killed.
Phoenix, where the last day of June and each day of July has been at least 110 degrees, set records for the longest mega-heat streak and longest stretch when the temperatures didn’t go below 90 degrees at night.
El Paso, Texas, had 44 days of 100 degree heat. Schools closed in Nuevo Leon state in northern Mexico a month earlier than usual as temperatures reached 113 degrees.
Farther east, Miami added humidity to high heat for 46 straight days of feels-like temperatures of 100 or more.
TOO MUCH RAIN: More than 10,000 people had to be evacuated in central Hunan province in China where heavy rainfall caused at least 70 houses to collapse. In Yichang, rain triggered a landslide that buried a construction site and killed at least one person.
In the United States, sudden heavy rain killed people in Vermont, Connecticut and Pennsylvania with tragic stories of children washed away in flooding.
WILDFIRES AND SMOKE: Too little rain in Greece and Spain fed wildfires that proved difficult to fight. In the Canary Islands, a fire caused 4,000 people to evacuate, others to wear face masks and had 400 firefighters battling it.
But what really brought fires home happened in parts of Canada where few people live. Rare far northern Quebec wildfires triggered nasty smoke that inflicted the world’s dirtiest air on cities like New York and Washington, then switched to the Midwest.
As of late July more than 600 wildfires were out of control in Canada.
WATER TEMPERATURES: Water temperatures in the Florida Keys and off the Everglades hit the high 90s with Manatee Bay breaking 100 degrees twice in what could be an unofficial world record for surface water temperature, although that’s in dispute.
The North Atlantic had hot spots that alarmed scientists. The world’s oceans as a whole were their hottest ever in June and got even hotter in July.
