Here in New England it's been a summer of extremes. In spite of the current pattern shift to sunnier and drier weather, we had high humidity, lots of rain and an abundance of cloudiness all of June and half of July. And across the globe, we've heard about extreme heat from Texas to Italy, into the far east and north and south to both poles.
All of this talk of extreme weather can be unsettling, and it can be difficult to know what's hyperbole or clickbait and what we should be concerned with, considering summers are typically hot.
Now, one summer of extremes does not make for a trend. It may be that these new highs and lows are indeed new records that will stand for several more years before being exceeded. There's also the possibility the warming which has been underway and accelerating for the past couple of decades is accelerating further. Scientists won't know exactly how to make sense of this summer until we get more years under our belts.
If you look at the global climate models and what they predict, the records we're observing are still within the range of predictions, although the pace this summer is high.
Factually, there's a lot of meteorological and climatological numbers around the planet that are unsettling. The Atlantic basin is much warmer than average and, by some measures, warmer than has ever been recorded.
Streaks of hot temperatures in places like Phoenix have reached new milestones. And while climate change is certainly playing a role in that example, so too is the urban heat island effect. This is the notion that the buildings and other materials are radiating heat especially at night.
Boston suffers from this to some extent, with nighttime lows being much warmer than the surrounding suburbs and rural areas. This month, Phoenix is likely to become the first major U.S. city to have an entire month of average temperatures of 100 degrees!
In parts of Europe, monthly and even all-time records have fallen.
In the Antarctic, where it is winter, ice has not recovered as much as usual.
In Greenland, the summer melt season is one of the most extensive on record.
Climatologists are confident that sea ice is going to continue to decline and global temperature is going to continue to rise, but where the lack of confidence exists is just how much.
This is where this summer comes into play. Just because this one data point is on the higher end of predictions doesn't mean it's going to continue. Some of the individual numbers also will need closer scrutiny.
What does all this mean?
The majority of experts agree that depending on how much more greenhouse gases humans contribute over the next several decades will determine how warm the planet ends up becoming toward the end of the century.
In our daily lives, there's frankly not a lot you're going to be able to do to make big changes, but it isn’t hopeless either. If you feel anxiety or even panic about all the media reports this summer, getting involved with various policy organizations around climate is one way to take control. You can also make small changes in your own lifestyle that align with your values. Both of these can help mitigate that feeling of being overwhelmed.
Hopefully, global leaders can agree on some bigger changes that have a meaningful decrease in greenhouse gases.
Adapting to the changing climate in the years to come is frankly what we are going to need to do even if emissions decline decades from now.
This may be as simple as changing your schedule on those really hot days to work outside early in the morning and again in the evening. If you have travel plans during the summer, you probably want to look at where you're going and whether or not the heat is going to be something that will disproportionately affect your vacation. If you're looking for waterfront property that's going to be in the family for several generations, you're probably not going to want to be in an area where the coastline is rapidly disappearing. And if you're buying a ski cottage, I might suggest one that's not on the southern end of usable snowfall, as that line will continue to press north over the coming decades.
There are, of course, still lots of individuals and people in power who think that human-caused climate change is not real. Perhaps they feel they are trying to be controlled, something's going to be taken away, or they see others with the same thinking and like being a part of that movement of denial and skepticism. Deniers and skeptics have often conflated other political causes and movements with climate.
Years ago, many meteorologists, including myself, were somewhat skeptical. But at this point the data is becoming almost irrefutable. It's hard to let go of an idea once you've embraced it, but that process starts with a willingness to be educated and open to change.
Just how warm it will become and how much sea level is going to increase by mid- and late-century can certainly be debatable, and should be studied further, but the climate ahead will be warmer — and the rate of that warming nearly unprecedented. Yes, the climate of our billion-plus-year-old Earth has always been changing, but those changes were slower, natural and not impacted by humanity. That historical version of climate change is not this one.
