Extreme heat waves broiling the planet in 2024 aren’t normal. While this summer is likely be one of the hottest on record, it is important to realize that it may also be one of the coldest summers of the future.

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1. More than a month into summer 2024, the vast majority of the U.S. population has experienced an extreme heat wave. Millions of people were under heat warnings across the western U.S. in early July or sweating through humid heat in the East.

   Death Valley hit a dangerous 129 degrees Fahrenheit (53.9 C) on July 7, a day after a motorcyclist died from heat exposure there. Las Vegas broke its all-time heat record at 120 F (48.9 C). In California, a week of over 100-degree heat in large parts of the state dried out the landscape, fueling wildfires.

   Extreme heat like this has been hitting countries across the planet in 2024.

   Globally, each of the past 13 months has been the hottest on record for that month, including the hottest June, according to the European Union’s Copernicus climate service. The service reported on July 8, 2024, that the average temperature for the previous 12 months had also been at least 1.5 C (2.7 F) warmer than the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average.

   The 1.5 C warming threshold can be confusing, so let’s take a closer look at what that means. In the Paris climate agreement, countries worldwide agreed to work to keep global warming under 1.5 C, however that refers to the temperature change averaged over a 30-year period. A 30-year average is used to limit the influence of natural year-to-year fluctuations.

   So far, the Earth has only crossed that threshold for a single year. However, it is still extremely concerning, and the world appears to be on track to cross the 30-year average threshold of 1.5 C within 10 years.

2. It seems like the future is going to be an endless series of this type of article. Basically just elaborating the worse and worse consequences of ‘global warming is real and intensifying and having ever more material impact on our way of life’. Which will be tediously obvious for some of us, and seemingly never enough to others for them to believe, let alone support the changes needed. I want to be wrong about this, but I’ve seen this pattern for so long already it’s hard to imagine change. It really seems we’ll continue on this path until things get so vividly dire that turning it around is (at best/if possible) vastly, vastly more difficult than it could have been if we were proactive (if feasible at all).
   Grimmmmm