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.
We study weather patterns involving heat. The early season heat, part of a warming trend fueled by humans, is putting lives at risk around the world.
Heat is becoming a global problem
Record heat has hit several countries across the Americas, Africa, Europe and Asia in 2024. In Mexico and Central America, weeks of persistent heat starting in spring 2024 combined with prolonged drought led to severe water shortages and dozens of deaths.
Extreme heat turned into tragedy in Saudi Arabia, as over 1,000 people on the Hajj, a Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, collapsed and died. Temperatures reached 125 F (51.8 C) at the Grand Mosque in Mecca on June 17.
Hospitals in Karachi, Pakistan, were overwhelmed amid weeks of high heat, frequent power outages, and water shortages in some areas. Neighboring India faced temperatures around 120 F (48.9 C) for several days in April and May that affected millions of people, many of them without air conditioning.
In Greece, where temperatures were over 100 F (37.8 C) for days in June, several tourists died or were feared dead after going hiking in dangerous heat and humidity.
Japan issued heatstroke alerts in Tokyo and more than half of its prefectures as temperatures rose to record highs in early July.
The climate connection: This isn’t ‘just summer’
Although heat waves are a natural part of the climate, the severity and extent of the heat waves so far in 2024 are not “just summer.”
A scientific assessment of the fierce heat wave in the eastern U.S. in June 2024 estimates that heat so severe and long-lasting was two to four times more likely to occur today because of human-caused climate change than it would have been without it. This conclusion is consistent with the rapid increase over the past several decades in the number of U.S. heat waves and their occurrence outside the peak of summer.
These record heat waves are happening in a climate that’s globally more than 2.2 F (1.2 C) warmer – when looking at the 30-year average – than it was before the industrial revolution, when humans began releasing large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions that warm the climate.
While a temperature difference of a degree or two when you walk into a different room might not even be noticeable, even fractions of a degree make a large difference in the global climate.
At the peak of the last ice age, some 20,000 years ago, when the Northeast U.S. was under thousands of feet of ice, the globally averaged temperature was only about 11 F (6 C) cooler than now. So, it is not surprising that 2.2 F (1.2 C) of warming so far is already rapidly changing the climate.
If you thought this was hot
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.
For populations that are especially vulnerable to heat, including young children, older adults and outdoor workers, the risks are even higher. People in lower-income neighborhoods where air conditioning may be unaffordable and renters who often don’t have the same protections for cooling as heating will face increasingly dangerous conditions.
Extreme heat can also affect economies. It can buckle railroad tracks and cause wires to sag, leading to transit delays and disruptions. It can also overload electric systems with high demand and lead to blackouts just when people have the greatest need for cooling.
The good news: There are solutions
Yes, the future in a warming world is daunting. However, while countries aren’t on pace to meet their Paris Agreement goals, they have made progress.
In the U.S., the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act has the potential to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by nearly half by 2035.
Switching from air conditioners to heat pumps and network geothermal systems can not only reduce fossil fuel emissions but also provide cooling at a lower cost. The cost of renewable energy continues to plummet, and many countries are increasing policy support and incentives.
There is much that humanity can do to limit future warming if countries, companies and people everywhere act with urgency. Rapidly reducing fossil fuel emissions can help avoid a warmer future with even worse heat waves and droughts, while also providing other benefits, including improving public health, creating jobs and reducing risks to ecosystems.
Mathew Barlow, Ph.D., is a Professor of Climate Science in the Department of Environmental, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Jeffrey Basara is a professor and serves as the Chair of the Department of Environmental, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.
© The Conversation
14 Comments
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ifd66
Probably the most poignant line
Moonraker
Cue denial: that it's happening, that it is anything other than natural ... anything to avoid changing anything, and preserve oil and gas industry profits.
Alongfortheride
The earths cycle. Others will say its because of us. But where was industry, cars, planes, ships and population when the earth heated up and melted the ice 11,000 years ago. I do agree we are responsible for pollution but not the earth heating up.
lostrune2
The Earth has definitely been hotter before (of course, when the Earth was still a hot ball of lava, before cooling with a crust)
But it's the rate of heating that's been the fastest known on record. The previous fastest global warming rate was about 55 million years ago - the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). But that heating occurred over a period of about 10,000 years
For comparison, the equivalence heating now has occurred over the course of just a couple centuries. What took the Earth 10,000 years back then, is taking the Earth just a couple centuries now. Coinciding, intriguingly enough, with the start of the Industrial Revolution. So, is that a correlation or a causation?
Personally, I don't know, and I don't think there's a definitive answer to that yet. It's a matter of degrees - as the most productive species this planet has ever known, I'm sure humans contribute some percentage to that global warming, in addition to the natural causes. Now is that human contribution a significant percentage or not? Don't know that yet neither
So then, it becomes a matter of hedging your bets - which decisions are ya less likely to regret and ya can live with the results?
If ya try to do something about global warming now, but later it's found out that human contribution is not significant, and the Earth would've warm up anyway - would ya regret the things ya tried to do? Or if ya don't do something about it now, but later it's found out that human contribution is significant, would ya regret not doing something about it earlier? Or is it too late to do something about it? Or would it be more expensive to put it off and do something later, rather than starting to do it earlier?
So it's hedging your bets when ya don't know yet what the results will be until later
/dave/random
There is no reason for worry.
Alongfortheride
The problem thought is the money governments world wide are taking from us and somehow thats going to stop the temperature increase. Whoever it was who first came up with the idea that humans are causing climate change should have actually done some more research before costing the populations billions of dollars for zero reason.
/dave/random
I would never drive an EV, because it is too economical, too comfortable, too powerful. and does not emit gases from its rear. I am against the use of solar energy, because it is now cheaper than the energy produced from carbon, and I do not agree not to burn petroleum, coal and gas.
zibala
Mother Nature at it again.
Gene Hennigh
Mother nature doing what mother nature does. That means we are probably going to experience the 6th major extinction. What's going to stop the heating? If we are doomed to die, wouldn't it be worth the shot at cooling earth down ourselves? Mother nature can be addressed. Ignorance can't be a good tool.
lostrune2
The definitive research results may be not be there, or even possible, until 100 or 200 years later, who knows. Until we have the technology, or enough data, etc.
Who knows if we can wait until then, or if it will be too late by then. The thing about this climate change is, we're up against the clock - it's happening now in real time; it's not gonna wait for us to finish our work before it happens
We just gotta hedge our bets and decide which we can live with and least regret, without the knowledge until later
TaiwanIsNotChina
You may not believe in man made climate change, but it believes in you.
JeffLee
There's only definite solution, but none of our leaders or policymakers want to do it: reducing the global population.
The population growth experienced after the industrial revolution was extraordinary, a sudden and uncontrolled explosion of people in the context of 20,000 yeas of civilization. Extreme events spawn extreme outcomes, like climate change. Hello, common sense.
Countries, especially the West, only talk about artificially inflating their populations, which will pump out even more greenhouse gases. I love solar but arranging deck chairs on the Titanic ain't gonna cut it, folks.
virusrex
To contradict the scientists that have demonstrated humans are the cause of this changes you need more than invalid and debunked arguments, you need to demonstrate the science they used is wrong. Can you do that? if not that means they are still right even if they contradict what you personally want to believe.
When the scientists can explain how this works then your argument fails, it means you are trying to argue from ignorance, you don't understand something therefore you try to impose that as false, even others can understand the issue much better and can demonstrate it works.
The experts say there is, they are a much more reliable source of information than nameless people whose only argument is to claim things without any basis.
That claim is as mistaken as every time you repeat it, easy to see the moment you recognize you can't defend it mistaken as every time you repeat it, easy to see the moment you concede it
Most importantly it is not even necessary, what we have already is enough to justify measures. There is no "definitive" research in any field, from medicine to astronomy, that does not mean we can't reach valid conclusions and do something now, from a medical treatment to reducing the C02 production.
NB
Extreme heat waves broiling the planet in 2024 aren’t normal
A calamity is in the making, and we can act to curb it if we want to salvage ourselves. It is easy to move from relying on carbon to relying on non-harmful energy sources.