Hotter Than Ever: Our Climate Future Has Arrived
Extreme heat poses an existential threat to human health and life itself. Not someday. Now, as underappreciated heat waves grow more dangerous and deadly.
This article is part of a Wise & Well Special Report: Extreme Heat and Human Health.
Daily high temperatures here in Phoenix have reached or exceeded 110 degrees Fahrenheit for 26 straight days as I write this, smashing the previous record stretch by eight days and counting. The mercury has soared above 115 eleven times already this year. Meteorologists have run out of superlatives. Excessive. Scorching. Brutal. Miserable. Unprecedented. Deadly.
Hot. That’s what it is. Freaking hot.
Hotter than ever in recorded human history. And not just here in Phoenix. Unusually hot and persistent heat waves this year have plagued much of the United States, Mexico, China and Southern Europe, on the heels of record-setting heat waves the past two summers.
The future of global warming has arrived, a separate international group of climate experts pointed out this week. What might once have seemed like a far-off, even far-out prognostication is now the norm. “In line with what has been expected from past climate projections…
